MY HOWARD AND ITS CRITICS

MY HOWARD AND ITS CRITICS Dr. James Edward Cheek and I entered upon the main campus of Howard University in lock-sync in September 1969, he as President, me, more humbly, as a Freshman. Dr. Cheek, formerly President of Shaw University in North Carolina, remained at Howard for 20 years and dramatically improved it, while withstanding withering criticism from every side, including naive students and nagging local press. Yet, attendance zoomed; physical plant expanded; academic degree offerings multiplied. As importantly, we acquired a radio station which electrified Washington with its "360 degree black experience," WHUR-FM, 96.3. Here too I later worked as a student intern in 1972. In short, Dr. James Edward Cheek richly blessed me, blessed us, in his administration of alma mater. Many who have criticized Howard, in my era of the 1970s, and even currently, as in the speciously avuncular Washingtoncitypaper.com article of March 25, 2016, have dealt with Howard U.'s mystery and majesty in vacuity, as though it has existed virtually, isolated from the material world, suspended in the ethereal world, of their gilded imaginations! Ha! "Come on in the room!" Goes the refrain of that gospel song meaning, leave the "contrabands encampment" of the District of Columbia, you critics! Come on out to Missouri, to Mississippi, to New York, to Washington state, to Ohio, or Colorado. Go anywhere, then dare compare Howard to any other educational institution in America, populated and controlled by black Americans, one will surely find that it compares favorably to anything, anywhere, run by anyone whether in or out of the educational realm. This fact is true of the entire world.