Cody D. Short is an Advance Local Reporting Fellow at AL.com and a proud graduate of Tuskegee University.

When the Supreme Court struck down race-based college admissions, I immediately thought about the role of historically black colleges and universities in what comes next. I thought about the 13 HBCUs in Alabama and wondered if they’ll see an increase in student admissions.

I was constantly reminded of the importance of HBCUs growing up, while watching The Cosby Show, A Different World or listening to the Tom Joyner Morning Show. The message was the same: Support HBCUs, attend HBCUs, graduate from HBCUs.

That was the choice I was given by my parents: “You’re going to an HBCU.” I attended predominantly white schools in the suburbs of Birmingham before transferring to a private Catholic school. My parents wanted me to have a well-rounded college experience after several years of being “the only” or “one of” a few non-white students.

I attended Tuskegee University and grew confident in being a Black woman and knowing that my voice was valuable. I met other Black students who were from all over the world. I had a chance to learn from them about differing cultures and perspectives.

Furthermore, my dad knew having a degree with “Tuskegee” on it was going to take me to places outside of Alabama. And it did. Months before I graduated, I was recruited to work for a Fortune 500 tech company in Austin. A start to my career that confirmed I will forever be indebted to “Mother Tuskegee.”

Experts suggest that removing consideration of race in the college application process will result in fewer Black, Hispanic and Native American students at some of the country’s most selective schools.

After the court’s decision, Miles College President Bobbie Knight said, “I am concerned about this ruling, as it evokes memories of a time when equal and fair access to higher education was denied. It’s a fact that this denial contributed to the creation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.”

It’s possible that students who planned to attend an elite school will find a home instead at an HBCU. Black people have a history of finding education, forming supportive communities and welcoming other marginalized groups into our spaces.

Alabama’s first HBCU, Alabama State, opened in 1867.

“HBCUs have been an integral part of the United States,” said entrepreneur, lawyer and Alabama State University graduate, Eric Guster. “HBCUs are a safe haven of higher education which many students find not only academics, but the support, love, appreciation of self and self-confidence needed to succeed. We have students who attend Ivy League schools and should have that opportunity if they wish.”

In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said Harvard College and the University of North Carolina used race in a “negative manner” when deciding who to admit. He said colleges should be colorblind and only admit students on merit.

Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson dissented by saying, “Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better.”

She is right. Affirmative action, or levers that proactively make schools and workplaces more diverse, emerged during the civil rights movement. Affirmative action leveled the playing field for Black people who historically had been discriminated against during the college admissions process. But our society is still not equal. And Black, Hispanic and Native American students are still underrepresented at many universities, according to numerous studies.

We often think of “affirmative action” as it relates to racial diversity, but historically, the biggest beneficiaries of these policies have been white women. In 1995, The Department of Labor reported that since the 1960s, affirmative action helped 5 million minorities and 6 million women advance in the workplace.

Data demonstrates ongoing barriers and inequitable pay Black women face in many professional fields.

Growing up, I was told that I needed to be two times better than my white peers in order to get just as far. Many minority households hear that same mantra.

In 1978, The Supreme Court officially ruled that race could be considered as a factor in college admissions. Some states later rolled back race-based affirmative action programs; Alabama’s public schools do not use race as a factor in admissions.

When I was a student at John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham, about a third of the student body was Black. Half of us went to HBCUs; the other half went to PWIs, or predominantly white institutions. I remember the common thought of HBCUs not being “up to par” for the next level of learning, as if smaller PWIs don’t also have similar struggles to HBCUs.

But HBCUs are incredibly important factories for future Black thinkers and leaders. HBCUs educate high numbers of the nation’s Black engineers, lawyers, doctors and politicians. Not to mention the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, who graduated from Howard University.

In 2021, there were 216,638 students at HBCUs around the country, according to federal data. Alabama’s 13 HBCUs enrolled 34,798 students that year.

And Alabama’s HBCUs, which have an estimated billion-dollar impact on the state economy, are seeing a spike in enrollment.

Not everyone thinks that HBCUs will see a surge in enrollment from students who do not want to apply to extremely selective colleges after the Supreme Court decision.

“I’m not convinced HBCUs will get an enrollment rush from SCOTUS’ decision…There’s way too much money in admitting students of color than boxing them out,” said Jarrett Carter, founding editor of HBCU Digest & Educations News.

Dominique Baker, associate professor at Southern Methodist University, points to what happened in California when race consciousness admission was taken out of the college admissions process.

“It’s not clear what this decision will mean for individual institutions yet. A lot of the impacts from this decision will be determined based on how institutions respond,” she said. “There is certainly potential that some institutions may see increases in enrollment.”

So maybe it’s time to focus on sending our Black students back to where they were always accepted. An HBCU. Maybe it’s time to financially support institutions that were solely created at advancing Black leaders. An HBCU. Maybe it’s time to start valuing the institutions that are in our own backyard that make a fundamental difference in our state’s history, culture, and economy. An HBCU.

As Guster told me, “There are many other institutions of higher learning who want them to attend instead of some who may tolerate them attending.”