Are HBCUs Ready For Gay History?

Morehouse, the all-male historically black college, to offer LGBT course

College campuses are thought to be home to the best minds that America has to offer. During the college years, people often experience what it's like to be on their own for the first time, developing and nurturing their own opinions and preparing themselves, new worldview intact, to go out into the "real world" and make a difference.

It's also a time where many begin to come into themselves as individuals, learning about their personality and sexuality.

While many college campuses, the more open-minded ones at least, have student groups catering to people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, it's not every day that you hear about schools offering actual courses focused on the LGBT community, especially not at HBCUs -- historically black colleges and universities. Next year, that's about to change.

Beginning in the Spring 2013 semester, Morehouse College will offer a course focusing on the intersection of blackness and being LGBT, according to the school's paper The Maroon Tiger:

The course is expected to outline various key concepts in Black feminism and critical cultural theory and methodology. Described as “an interdisciplinary survey of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) culture and politics” in the course’s syllabus, the class will serve as an in-depth look into critical, social and cultural theory that will vastly benefit the Morehouse community.

If there ever were an HBCU campus to offer such a course, it would be Morehouse. The historic HBCU has been widely seen in the black community as a bastion for black manhood, producing such "Morehouse Men" as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Maynard Jackson, Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson. The school, like the rest of U.S. society, has long had a gay community, but in recent years Morehouse has seen a number of clashes -- primarily social or cultural, but sometimes resulting in physical violence -- involving the school's openly gay population.

In 2002, Gregory Love, a gay Morehouse student, was beaten with a baseball bat after he mistakenly walked into a shower occupied by Aaron Price. Price was sentenced to 10 years in prison. At the time of the attack, LGBT students said the school wasn't doing enough to spread a message of tolerance.