Dr. John Silvanus Wilson Jr., who is guiding the nation’s only African-American men’s college, says the future of HBCUs is at risk if the colleges don’t figure out how to appeal to students.
His mantra, “Toward Capital and Character Preeminence,” is an initiative aimed at transforming the historic college into a world-class campus, while simultaneously producing a generation of men who will go on to become change agents like so many of their predecessors.
“Preeminence in capital and character is a powerful combination seldom exhibited by institutions of higher education,” says Wilson, who stepped down as executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in 2013 to lead the nation’s only African-American men’s college.
“So we are looking to increase institutional capital enough to have a sustainably world-class living and learning environment, and enhance institutional character enough to reliably produce more graduates who will help heal the world in distinctive ways,” he says. “And because no college or university that we know of has ever simultaneously realized both capital and character preeminence, that means we are setting out to do what has never been done before, at least not on the scale we envision.”
Philadelphia to Morehouse
It’s an ambitious undertaking, but Wilson isn’t short on ideas. In fact, he had been actively looking for ways to transform his beloved Morehouse ever since he journeyed south from Philadelphia to Atlanta in 1975 to enroll at the HBCU as a freshman.
It was at the Salem Baptist Church, located in a small suburb outside of Philadelphia, where Wilson first learned about the small, liberal arts college founded in 1867. The church’s pastor, Rev. Robert Johnson-Smith, was a devoted Morehouse man, as were his two sons.
