The Gift Sends a Powerful Message

Walter H. Annenberg’s colossal $50-million gift to the United Negro College Fund bolsters black colleges at a time when the black presence on campus is declining dramatically, at a time when more young black men are in prison than in college.

Annenberg’s challenge grant, the largest single gift in the history of black colleges, is earmarked for the organization’s capital-needs fund. To illustrate the warmth of the welcome the gift will get, the average endowment per student at black colleges is less than $7,000, barely one-third the average at primarily white schools.

The United Negro College Fund helps support operations at 41 private, historically black colleges--roughly half of all black schools. Operations help is welcome, but physical improvements are no small matter on campuses that were mostly built soon after the Civil War and shortchanged since then by segregation.

Legal segregation no longer bars black students from most U.S campuses, although as recently as 25 years ago, 75% of black college students attended black schools. Now, with only 20% of black enrollment, black colleges, because they play a special role, account for 40% of all black graduates. United Negro College Fund schools primarily educate students from poor and working-class families. The campuses also serve students who lack adequate preparation and parental support. These students are allowed to prove they can do college work--and to challenge the fund’s motto: A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

President Bush, a supporter of the fund since his own college days, was a house guest in Rancho Mirage over the weekend when Annenberg announced his impressive gift, a gift on a scale to challenge and encourage others also to give.