Commentary: Getting the Short End of the Stick Something that Blacks – and HBCUs – are Familiar With

Date: Monday, November 12, 2007By: Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com
Back in the 1960s, when the Little Rock School District built a spanking new building for some of its white elementary students, black first through sixth graders got the leftover school -- Rightsell Elementary. We discovered that, among other things, the previous population had taken the playground equipment with them. We were left with a wide, stripped field with patches of concrete here and there where playthings used to be anchored.
Our all-black student body, all-black faculty and all-black PTA made lemonade out of the lemons. The grown-ups bought us bats and balls, and, at recesses, we kids got good at softball and dodge ball.
Making do was nothing new for black people in those days. Nor is it now.
In Nashville, a place of much higher learning than the rudimentary Rightsell, is finding its students, faculty and patrons wringing their hands and taxing their imaginations in hopes of making do yet another year.
Fisk University is 141 years old, but time has yet to turn an old struggle obsolete. In its fifth year of existence, the school’s chorus -- the Jubilee Singers -- set out to travel the world and, hopefully, to raise money so their institution could stay open. It worked, and the Jubilee Singers became -- and have been since -- world renowned.
Of course, these times require much more of an institution if it is to remain viable, and singing tours don’t cut it. Students -- and accrediting bodies -- demand modern facilities and top-notch faculty, neither of which comes cheap. You can’t pay a highly credentialed professor with room and board anymore.
Already built on a wing and a prayer, HBCUs have never recovered from desegregation at white schools, which had the unintended consequence of erasing the primary appeal of black schools; they were the only recourse for the black college-bound in many cases, and there was a lot more competition.
Sadly, Fisk is past the running-low-on-cash stage; its operating fund is expected to run dry before the year is out. The endowment has been spent, and raising tuition won’t do the trick.
Like other predominantly black schools, Fisk has turned to desperate measures. It has cut a deal with a new art museum in Bentonville, Ark., to sell half-ownership of the Stieglitz art collection -- a prized donation to Fisk from the famous painter Georgia O’Keeffe in memory of her photographer husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Alice Walton, the daughter of Wal-Mart creator Sam Walton and founder of the Crystal Bridges Museum, has also offered $1 million to Fisk for renovating its art gallery.
There are 101 works in the Stieglitz collection. If the 50-50 deal goes through, Fisk will get about $30 million from Crystal Bridges. That means that, in a square deal, the total collection would price out at around $60 million. But, according to experts, one particular painting in the group titled “Radiator Building-Night” is alone valued at more than $20 million. All of a sudden, the $30 million deal sounds less sweet.
Wait, there’s more.
The O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe represents the artist’s estate, and it says Ms. O’Keeffe specified that the Stieglitz collection could never be sold or exchanged. At the same time, it agreed to one sale earlier this year, provided that Fisk sell “Radiator” to the O’Keeffe Museum for $7.5 million. Fortunately, a judge refused to let that corrupt bargain go through.
This is a heartbreaking but common tale. A black institution, established for all the right reasons and as a show of faith and self-determination in the midst of formidable odds, has to fight all of its life. Never mind that it takes licking after licking and manages to survive. Never mind that some of the great minds of our age are its produce. Never mind the perseverance it instills, the ignorance it vanquishes and the talent it nourishes. Let it flail and flounder. Let it sink or swim. And plunder the spoils while you’re at it.
As The Tennessean editorialized recently, “Fisk is a priceless gem. A $30 million offer for that artwork, as big as it sounds, should be an insult to Nashville and the innermost feelings of the university.”
A time-work insult, as it turns out.