Annenberg to Give $50 Million to Black Schools

In the largest single donation ever to black higher education in the United States, publishing magnate Walter H. Annenberg said Friday that he has pledged $50 million to the United Negro College Fund.

“Unless young blacks are brought into the mainstream of economic life, they will continue to be on the curbstone,” Annenberg, the 82-year-old former ambassador to Great Britain, said in a telephone interview from his Rancho Mirage estate. “The key to this problem is education.”

The gift was to be announced formally on Sunday by President Bush during his weekend stay at the Annenberg estate, where he and Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu are holding economic and trade talks.

Annenberg said his gift will be a challenge grant to form the basis of what the UNCF hopes will be a $250-million capital campaign. He said he would be giving the money in phases during “the next five or 10 years,” as the fund reaches step-by-step goals toward the other $200 million.

“Black colleges have got to be supported,” Annenberg added, urging that his challenge grant be matched from other sources. “The entire country has to get behind this. Foundations, corporations and private citizens. We can’t just leave this for the government to do.”

The Annenberg grant tops the previous largest gift to any black-oriented school or educational program--the $20 million given by actor Bill Cosby in November, 1988, to Spelman College in Atlanta.

And the gift comes at a crucial time for the fund, which aids 41 historically black colleges throughout the nation and gives scholarships to deserving students. The declining enrollment of black students, particularly black males, at all American colleges in the past decade has caused much alarm. In addition, the financial condition of some black colleges, including many small institutions in the South, has become precarious.

“Words cannot do justice to my feelings of gratitude,” Christopher Edley, president of the fund, said in a statement prepared for Sunday’s ceremony, according to the Associated Press.

Annenberg, the former owner of TV Guide and other publications, has been one of the nation’s strongest supporters of higher education. His $3-million gift to USC brought his total donations to the college’s recent fund-raising drive to $26.5 million and put the university over the top in its $567-million fund drive. The USC School of Communications bears the Annenberg name, as does a similar school at the University of Pennsylvania.

The United Negro College Fund was established in 1944 and has since raised more than $650 million for its members. The fund estimates that the average endowment of its institutions was $6,710 per student in 1987 compared to an average of $19,918 per student at primarily white institutions.

While the Annenberg pledge is enormous, it is not the largest in general higher education. That spot is held by Robert W. Woodruff, former chairman of the Coca-Cola Co., who gave $105 million to Emory University in Atlanta in 1979. In 1986, David Packard, co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Co. electronics firm, pledged $70 million to Stanford University and his partner, William Hewlett, gave $50 million to the university.

Annenberg served as ambassador to Great Britain from 1969 to 1974. He joined his father’s company, Triangle Publications, in 1928 and developed it into a successful publishing firm. He founded Seventeen and TV Guide magazines and in 1957 bought the Philadelphia Daily News. His father’s firm had previously acquired the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1988, he sold Triangle Publications Inc. to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $3 billion.

Annenberg said Friday he was particularly alarmed at the rise of gangs among black youths in the nation’s cities.

“Do you want the gangs you have in Los Angeles to continue endlessly? Maybe this will be the start of the end of that,” he said, referring to the increased scholarships and college recruiting that his money will help buy.

Times staff writer Glenn Bunting contributed to this story.