Hampton, University of Delaware drama proof that our HBCU neighborhoods need attention

There’s no shortage of big news or hot takes in HBCU football this season, but one that has drawn the ire of one institution occurred this week when Delaware News Journal reporter Kevin Tresolini wrote about the University of Delaware’s goal to leave the Coastal Athletic Association.

That’s no surprise if you’re a local sports follower and read the tea leaves. Delaware is in the middle of a fundraising push to upgrade its facilities and make the athletic program more attractive to an FBS conference.

The surprise and disappointment come in Tresolini’s piece where he mentions newcomers Campbell, Bryant, and, of course, Hampton University.

“Seeing how overmatched Hampton was in a league game against the Blue Hens and the paltry turnout of 3,686 showed why that seems more sensible and likely,” he wrote. “Hampton is in its second year in the CAA and has been joined by other non-notables, such as Campbell this year and Bryant next year. There goes the neighborhood.”

The last sentence is what has Hampton stakeholders and the HBCU community at large up in arms, and for good reason. It’s a dog whistle that goes back generations to the White Flight of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when white families abandoned urban cities due to civil unrest to create idyllic suburban communities, and Black families became upwardly mobile and sought to move to these communities.

“There goes the neighborhood” was the common phrase used by people who didn’t want them there.

As a native of Wilmington, Delaware, I understand this better than most. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April of 1968, Wilmington was one of the cities where a distraught Black population took the streets for days, so much so that Mayor John Babiarz and Delaware Governor Charles Terry called in the National Guard. The Guard stayed and enforced curfew from April to January of 1969, still the longest military occupation of an American city to this day.

White Wilmingtonians were so spooked by the uprisings they began to move to areas such as Claymont, Pike Creek, Mill Creek, Newark, Newport, Bear, and Glasgow. As some Black Wilmingtonians began to experience some prosperity, they began filtering out of the city, again making them very nervous.

Which brings us back to 2023. Hampton began the exodus from the MEAC when they left in 2018, first taking up residence in the Big South before joining the CAA. North Carolina A&T, in its first year in the CAA, followed the same format. When two HBCUs joined a predominantly white conference that has for years upheld itself as better than these schools and their previous leagues, certain attitudes and language were to be expected.

And to those of us who have lived in the First State long enough, it was no surprise that the University of Delaware, for whom decades-long head start ahead of Delaware State University isn’t enough, would be the one to use the media to say how they really feel.

UD believes it is a long-lost Ivy League member – and it conducts itself as such, keeping some records private even though it claims to be a public institution – so its administration feels emboldened to call its shots and throw its weight around.

In the interest of full disclosure, I once worked as a freelance sportswriter for the News Journal for eight years. As a Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters Association member, I’ve spent time around Kevin Tresolini. He’s a veteran reporter with well-established credibility, covering every major Delaware sporting event over 40-plus years. He’s someone whose work I have the utmost respect for.

That’s no excuse for his piece’s poor wording choice, however. The tone of saying “there goes the neighborhood” with an HBCU as the lead-in is not ideal, and Hampton, as well as any other HBCU, is well within its rights to take offense to it.

At the same time, it’s a harsh lesson learned for HBCUs that instead of running to someone else’s neighborhood because they have more resources and advantages, we should spend time creating those resources and advantages in our own communities and neighborhoods to make ours just as good, and in some cases, better than theirs.

Also, as far as Black media goes, this time in American history is more important for us than ever before. If a legacy organization like the News Journal is comfortable publishing language that is incendiary, then it’s pointless to continue pursuing that direction. Mark Wright, creator of the Bison Project, once told me that there’s nothing stopping us from telling our own stories, especially now that platforms can be created at minimal or zero cost.

Let’s stop worrying about what white America will think if we go into their neighborhoods and take some pride in improving and beautifying ours.