Black Colleges Experience a ‘Renaissance’ : Education: A Sepulveda company has taken nearly 100 prospects from Southern California high schools on get-acquainted tours of campuses.

As the time approached for Ayanna Woodard to graduate from high school, the 17-year-old spent her time like many other seniors: poring over brochures and touring schools in search of a college that would fit her needs.

She was concerned about the cost of tuition, distance from her home in Sylmar and the college’s size. But Ayanna also wanted to find a college that would fill a void in her high school education, which she said failed to recognize the contributions of African-Americans in science, literature, history and every other area of study.

“By the time you finish high school all you know about is slavery, how we got chased off our land and stuck here,” the Kennedy High School graduate said. “They don’t teach you about your background at all--you have to go home to your black colleges for that.”

For Ayanna, 18, home is now Tuskegee Institute, a black college in Tuskegee Institute, Ala., thanks in part to a business in Sepulveda that takes prospective students on tours of black colleges.

While the percentage of African-Americans attending college has plummeted over the past decade, enrollments at many of the nation’s 104 historically black colleges and universities are on the rise, creating what Christopher F. Edley, United Negro College Fund president and chief executive officer, called a black college “renaissance.”

The factors fueling the renaissance vary from lower tuition costs to a concern about racial incidents on predominantly white colleges. Whatever the reason, some view the trend as a positive step for African-American students.

“I believe in these schools,” said Yasmin Delahoussaye, who with her husband, Greg, runs Educational Student Tours in Sepulveda. “The sense of warmth, the sense of belonging, the sense of history and heritage is what’s attracting students to black colleges. It makes all the difference in the world.”

In her search for a college, Ayanna and her parents consulted the Delahoussayes. Believed to be the only service of its kind in Southern California, EST introduces students to traditionally black colleges through consultations and visits to campuses.

Started last year, EST has already taken nearly 100 students on tours of schools such as Howard University in Washington, Morehouse College in Atlanta and Hampton University in Hampton, Va. For about $700, which includes air fare, room and board, the students tour for five to six days, visiting the schools and talking to students and faculty.

TaRessa Stone Stovall, a spokeswoman for Spelman College in Atlanta, said businesses such as EST have helped black colleges and universities increase students’ awareness of the schools.

“While we work hard . . . you can never truly do enough. We appreciate the work of others who are helping to get the word out about all historically black colleges and universities,” she said. Stovall said the tours also point out the diversity among the campuses.

“We are not a homogenous and predictable group,” Stovall said.

The tours can be a deciding factor for some students, said J.J. Johnson, a spokesman for Tuskegee Institute who has worked with the Delahoussayes. “We like what they are doing and we hope they continue doing it,” he said of the couple’s service.

Jeri Holden, a guidance counselor at Kennedy High in Granada Hills, has had four students take tours with the Delahoussayes. Holden said the tours helped fill a void and inspired the students to achieve.

“There’s not a lot of information available about the schools,” Holden said. Those students who went on the tours not only learned about the different campuses, but also came back believing that college was an attainable goal for them, she said.

“So many of them don’t allow themselves to dream about going to college” because they don’t know anyone who has ever gone, she said.

The Delahoussayes opened their business at a time of both promise and despair for black students in higher education.

According to the American Council on Education’s Eighth Annual Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education, the percentage of low-income black high school graduates going to college plummeted from 40% to 30% between 1976 and 1988, and the enrollment rate for middle-income blacks fell from 53% to 36%.

Those trends have widened the gap between white and black college attendance rates. Even so, enrollment at some black colleges is up.

The United Negro College Fund reports that applications are up at two-thirds of the 41 UNCF institutions. Between 1986 and 1989, enrollment at the schools increased 13%.

Franklyn G. Jenifer, president of Howard University--known as the Mecca of black higher education--said the rise was the result of events in the mid-1980s that made life uncomfortable for black students at predominantly white institutions.

During the Reagan Administration the amount of federal grant money declined drastically, while the cost of college tuitions increased, Jenifer said. There has also been a backlash against affirmative action programs and their perceived beneficiaries and an increase of racial incidents on predominantly white college campuses.

“The students’ discomfort has led to a migration back to black colleges where the environment is perceived to be more wholesome and welcoming,” Jenifer said, adding that the relatively low cost of the schools was also a major factor.

The average cost of the 41 UNCF institutions is 38% less than for comparable private colleges in the South and is about half as much as is charged by private four-year colleges nationally.

After going on a tour with the Delahoussayes, Ayanna won a scholarship to Tuskegee. She was attracted, she said, to the small classes, the homey feel of the campus town and the history of the institute--once home to noted scientist George Washington Carver and scholar Booker T. Washington.

“You walk around the campus and you feel proud,” Ayanna said.

The Delahoussayes said that many other students would feel the same pride and enthusiasm as Ayanna about such schools. But in California, where there are no black colleges, few students even know the schools exist.

“Students don’t know about these schools because high school counselors don’t even know,” said Yasmin Delahoussaye. “And that’s sad.”

Many of the students are inspired by their first visit to a black college.

“I’ve never been in an environment like that,” said 16-year-old Eryn Houston of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. “You know when they say brotherhood ? It was like that.”

Yasmin Delahoussaye was a junior high and high school teacher and counselor in the San Fernando Valley for nearly 15 years and now is a college counselor at Pierce College. She stresses the value of providing students with role models--something she said black colleges can provide.

“To stand on James Brawley Drive in Atlanta at 12 noon, where you can see thousands of African-American students from Morehouse, Spelman and Clark is just amazing,” Delahoussaye said. “These kids need to see that.”

So far, EST has attracted students from all over Los Angeles. Gregory Delahoussaye, who teaches at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, said some of the students who have taken the tours have returned with a new-found interest in higher education.

Recently, the business has gotten help from two unlikely sources.

The NBC sitcom “A Different World,” set at a black college, has helped spark interest in the schools. And last month, nearly 50,000 people turned out to see two historically black schools--Howard University and Southern University of Baton Rouge, La.--square off at the Los Angeles Coliseum in a game sponsored by the Los Angeles Football Classic Foundation. In addition, thousands attended a parade, college fair and concert also held during the second annual “Classic Week.”

“It’s more than a football game,” said Foundation President Fred Cooper, an alumnus of Grambling State University in Grambling, La. Cooper said the event raises funds for the schools and gives the community an opportunity to learn about the history of the institutions.

Critics have argued that black colleges lack the resources of predominantly white institutions, which may jeopardize the education students receive. Some have been plagued with financial problems taking them to the brink of closing. In 1988, Bishop College in Dallas closed after losing its accreditation two years earlier, and just last year another small college, Morristown College in Morristown, Tenn., closed its doors.

Black college officials are all too familiar with such arguments.

“It is the case that many black institutions don’t have the same resources as the majority institutions,” Johnson said. But, he said, “That’s one of the strengths of the black colleges--to take what’s available and make the best of it.”

Many of the historically black schools were established after the Civil War by churches and other institutions to educate freed slaves. The institutions became the primary educators of African-Americans in this country, graduating such influential African-American figures as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and author Ralph Ellison.

In the mid-1960s, 80% of all black graduates holding bachelor of arts degrees had earned them at a black college or university. When the civil rights movement eventually forced open the doors of predominantly white institutions, black student enrollment at white institutions gradually increased. Today, 83% of black students attend white institutions, according to the American Council on Education.

But that appears to be changing.

“The feeling is that they’re just more comfortable here,” said Johnson of Tuskegee Institute, explaining the increase.

“That comfort translates into better academic performance. The black student at the black college can invest his energy in bringing out the best of his abilities. . . . Energy is not devoted to proving oneself because of one’s skin color.”

Eighteen-year-old Chionesu “Cho” Wells graduated this spring from Polytechnic School, a private elementary and high school in Pasadena, with a Scholastic Aptitude Test score of 1200, which would have qualified him for admission to some of the nation’s most selective schools. But because he and his sisters had been virtually the only black students in most of their classes, Wells wanted a different college experience.

He applied to six colleges--all historically black institutions--and won a scholarship to attend Hampton University.

“All my life I’ve gone to predominantly Caucasian schools. I didn’t really like that too much,” he said.

Wells, who plans to major in engineering, said he expects to have a different rapport with both professors and students at Hampton. “We’re coming from the same background so I think they’ll understand me more,” he said.

For the parents of black students, the schools alleviate at least some of the fears that are associated with sending a child away to college for the first time.

“I can’t think of anything I would rather have her do than go to a black college,” said Dwan Smith-Fortier, Ayanna’s mother. “I think her chances of matriculating . . . of meeting an appropriate mate . . . and . . . of setting up a network of lifelong friends are all better at a black college.”

Anna and James Wesley of West Covina sent their daughter Anja on a college tour with the Delahoussayes earlier this year and have encouraged her to apply to a black university. Both graduates of Florida A&M; University in Tallahassee, the Wesleys say success is a collective effort at black colleges.

“People aren’t going to let you fail at a black college,” Anna Wesley said. “They’re going to push you to do your best.”