Aligned with the aims of the Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education, this thematic issue “address the unique realities” of Black women and girls within the HBCU environment. This issue invites Black women experiences from various spaces and places on HBCU campuses and in the HBCU community into a collective conversation. We bring these scholarly, practical, conceptual, theoretical, and philosophical explorations together to (re)discover, center, and (re)define the experiences, sensemaking, and world-making practices of Black women within the HBCU context.

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb”—among the most powerful moments of the 2021 presidential inauguration—inspired the central inquiry of the 18th Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research: Why are we still climbing the hill of educational equity 67 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education? The purpose of this article is to challenge dominant narratives surrounding Brown and introduce perspectives that might help account for a general lack of progress—perspectives that typically are overlooked or erased in wider Brown discourses. Inspired by her poem, Patton Davis offers a scholarly analysis and contributes a robust understanding of Brown and its historical and contemporary meanings in the sociopolitical contexts of racism and white supremacy. Patton Davis considers pressing questions: How can study of the circumstances that have intensified the COVID-19 pandemic fuel collective understanding of racial inequities and intersectional injustices in education? How might a critical race lens guide educators, policymakers, and researchers toward a more progressive realization of the promises of Brown? What would it take for education researchers, the majority of whom are situated in postsecondary settings, to engage in activism modeled after the work of communities still fighting for the racial and educational equity envisioned in Brown?

Intersectionality is a perspective that brings visibility to how Black women are relegated to the margins of the university curriculum, if included at all. With this article, we extend our research on intersectionality methodology to explore intersectionality pedagogy (IP) and the significance of centering Black women's experiences in teaching and learning processes as one form of me-search. IP serves as the framing to build on the legacy of bell hooks and bring Black women, our knowledges and lived experiences from the margins of society to the center of pedagogical praxis.

No existing literature centers Black women college students (BWCS) who are targeted yet absent the discourse on anti‐black incidents at the intersection of gender. Using a 42‐case database, we highlight how BWCS are targeted with hate, discuss gender‐based racial trauma fueled by these incidents, and share recommendations for higher education.

Black women were historically relegated to a low position in the United States, precipitated by enslavement. Despite the horrors of enslavement, Black women "inherited self-sufficiency" (Noble, 1957, p. 18), a characteristic that would be vital for their preservation. This same self-sufficiency would become the driver for their educational aspirations. Over 200 years have passed since women were allowed to pursue higher education. Prior to the early 1800s, the possibility of receiving a college education was nonexistent for them. According to Sanford-Harris (1990), it was a widely held belief that women should not be educated in the same way as men. The education of Black women, in particular, was not a priority, nor were investments in their education. When Oberlin College opened its doors in 1833, women were accepted as students into the coeducational institution (Evans, 2008). More importantly, the opening of Oberlin ushered in the first significant presence of Black women in the academy. Yet there was very little concern about providing Black women with educational opportunities beyond courses promoting morality and domesticity (Evans, 2008; Perkins, 2015).

Racist and sexist power hierarchies endure in the US under the guise of fake news. The authors engage in the Black feminist tradition of truth-telling and centre the experiences of Black women in their examination of fake news and higher education’s role in the perpetuation of state violence. Their analysis shows higher education institutions can engage a pedagogy of fake news, which functions as language in service to state violence against Black women. This article closes with a discussion of how higher education institutions can engage in transversal politics, in solidarity with Black women to put an end to the state violence that shapes their everyday lives.

This qualitative study explored how Black LGBQ students at three urban private HBCUs experienced and navigated spaces that affirmed their racial identity but posed challenges to their sexual and gender identities. Drawing on Black respectability politics and environmental press as power as theoretical framing, we utilized a critical constructivist epistemology to unearth the complexities and contradictions that Black LGBQ students face in HBCU settings. Our analysis yielded three themes: (a) affirming/othering, (b) institutional pride/institutional change, and (c) safe space needed/wasted institutional efforts. Implications for higher education administrators and policymakers are offered within.

No existing literature centers Black women college students (BWCS) who are targeted yet absent the discourse on anti-black incidents at the intersection of gender. Using a 42-case database, we highlight how BWCS are targeted with hate, discuss gender-based racial trauma fueled by these incidents, and share recommendations for higher education.