Huston-Tillotson Opens Doors to Community
Steady Anchor
by Bryan Mealer
Driving past Huston-Tillotson College on Chicon Street, it's hard to get a distinct picture of what place the college actually holds in a city known for its university environment. A giant chain-link fence ringing the 23-acre campus gives the appearance of an institution that has been all but forgotten by local industry and commerce. Inside the fence, however, the college's purpose becomes clear, and visitors spending just a couple of hours on campus walk away with an important nugget of information: Huston-Tillotson's mission is critical to the survival of East Austin. While much of this particular wing of the city has fallen victim over the years to various stages of blight and despair, Huston-Tillotson has remained one of East Austin's significant centers of culture and community outreach - academically, socially, spiritually. Perhaps no one feels more strongly about the H-T mission than Dr. Joseph T. McMillan Jr., now in his 10th year as president of the predominantly African-American college that grew out of the Emancipation era. McMillan sees the college as a provider of education in various forms - as a safe harbor for poor kids wanting to get off the streets, and as a hub for cultural and professional networking activities, especially now that many of the once-thriving businesses in the area sit boarded-up and empty.
"We not only see ourselves as the oldest institution in the city, but as the biggest minority business in Austin." -- Huston-Tillotson president Dr. Joseph T.
McMillan Jr.
photograph by John Anderson"Huston-Tillotson really has a critical role to play in this community," McMillan says, sitting in his first-floor office of the Agard-Lovinggood Administration Building. "We not only see ourselves as the oldest institution in the city, but as the biggest minority business in Austin, a repository of culture."
McMillan is not shy about criticizing city and business leaders who allowed East Austin to languish in their metaphorical blind spot for so many years. McMillan remembers a time when the community was full of black-owned barber shops, restaurants, and places "for folks to go after work." It's not uncommon today, he says, for ex-students to visit the old neighborhood and feel as if they're on another planet.
Too many promises for Eastside development have gone unfulfilled while other parts of town have benefited from Austin's healthy economy, McMillan says. "My biggest problem is that everything takes too long. Everyone agrees that East Austin must be revitalized... but we talk, talk, talk, and can't quite get around to doing it." "It seems," he adds, "as if the business community does not see East Austin as a good investment and that is the problem."
Despite his frustration over the snail's pace of progress beyond campus, McMillan has managed to keep the privately funded Huston-Tillotson growing at a steady but quiet pace, both in terms of academic offerings, and in the form of a $30 million Campus Master Plan that points the way to a new library, building renovations, parking lots, and new dormitories.
Much of the tiny college's success can be attributed to federal funding through the Higher Education Act of 1965 - funding that Huston-Tillotson obtains based on its historical commitment to educating African-Americans (see box). Since McMillan took the H-T helm in 1988, funding has more than tripled at the college, one of the state's nine public and private black-oriented higher learning institutions - referred to in government parlance as HBCUs, or Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Community OutreachWith Huston-Tillotson's roots running deep in the United Methodist Church and United Church of Christ, the college draws on this church fellowship motif to host a slew of community gatherings. One day it serves as a meeting place for African-American business leaders, the next it serves as a temporary worship center for parishioners of Holy Cross Catholic Church, which is undergoing some construction work across the street. And every year, the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday march to the state Capitol either begins or ends on campus.
From a community perspective, H-T is devoted to early education and keeping East Austin kids off the streets. Its Upward Bound program, funded by the Department of Education, recruits inner-city high school kids year round and tutors them in math, English, reading, and study skills. The program provides field trips to government centers, industries, and other colleges around the state. Students from Huston-Tillotson's tutorial programs have since gone off to pursue degrees at MIT, Cal Tech, and Rice University, says McMillan.
"I want to prepare these students to be leaders," McMillan says. "And I believe our students can and will compete if they start early enough and insist on success."
Huston-Tillotson, unlike most colleges, makes community service mandatory for its students. Those holding under 30 credit hours are required to tutor in East Austin's elementary schools as part of orientation. The college also offers a high school diploma completion program in conjunction with AISD to enable older students or young high school dropouts to get their diplomas.
Wealth of HistoryHuston-Tillotson, Austin's oldest institution of higher learning, opened its doors as Tillotson College in 1875, thanks to the Rev. George Jeffrey Tillotson - who forged his way from Connecticut to Austin after Emancipation and staked the land where the college sits today. His mission then was to take in and educate black Americans who would otherwise be left to the slings of poverty and crude labor, and Allen Hall, a stately campus building that is no longer standing, was the first building used to educate African-Americans west of the Mississippi River following Emancipation. Years later, the school took on its current name when it merged with Dallas-based Samuel Huston College in 1952.
Although the college has historically served black students, today its student body of over 700 students is fairly diverse, with a 78.3% black student population; 8% Hispanic; 8.2% international; 4.4% Asian; 0.8% white; and 0.2% Native American.
Since opening its doors, a large part of Huston-Tillotson's mission has been to train elementary and secondary school teachers. In the early 1900s, the campus was recognized across the nation as the best teacher training institution for African-Americans, with a majority of black teachers in south and Central Texas hailing from Huston-Tillotson.
Today, H-T faculty and administrators cheerfully point to many of their standout graduates, including the likes of Robert Stanton, a Clinton appointee to head the National Parks Service; Walter Batts, director of internal affairs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and Azie Taylor Morton, head of the Department of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.
Another graduate, Ron Davis, the Democratic nominee for County Commissioner and a longtime Eastside activist, is quick to praise the college as a pillar of strength in East Austin. Davis, whose mother and several other family members graduated from Huston-Tillotson, talks about the college with boyish nostalgia. "I feel strongly that without that type of exposure I wouldn't be where I am now," he says. "They're the roots of the educational sector for African-Americans in this city."
Huston-Tillotson is also to be credited for creating a close-knit family environment for students, Davis says. Walking across the tree-lined campus, it's not uncommon to see large groups of students hanging out together, with even a professor sometimes thrown into the mix.
Dr. Judith Loredo, chair of H-T's Division of Education, said that for years students have chosen the small campus over large institutions where they run the risk of being just another Social Security number adrift in a lecture hall. "We like the fact that we know every student, their strengths and their weaknesses," she says. "It's different from a major university where you're on your own, where it's sink or swim. And it's a lot harder in those places to get help when you're sinking."
Still, because Huston-Tillotson is small, and not wealthy by any means, there's always a need for increased federal funding. While past funding has allowed Loredo's department to beef up its lending library and provide computer training, she had to put the purchase of media and audio/visual materials on hold until more funding - or a miracle - occurs.
Of the 19 academic departments at H-T, business, computer science, and communications are growing the fastest. The business department, with the largest enrollment, is in partnership with such high-tech corporations as Samsung, Applied Materials, Motorola, and Dell Computers, and McMillan says that this year's federal funding will go toward expanding the college's technology infrastructure. Past years' funding has allowed the college to buy fiberoptic cable and hardware for future installation of improved computer management systems and Internet access to all students.
The FutureOld as it is, the college has done a fair job of making do with the facilities that have stood on its grounds for almost a century. But with enrollment expected to grow beyond its current population of 700, and with a constant effort to provide its students with the most updated resources, the college is raring to stretch its legs.
Unfortunately, federal funds can only cover a small fraction of the overall construction needed. McMillan said the college has yet to use federal funding for construction because of its needs in other areas. Instead, the college looks toward corporate and alumni contributions to foot the bill for the Master Plan. The college currently has a "faithful alumni base," said McMillan, which is about 17 percent of 5,000 members. The college only averages about $300,000 per year in alumni contributions, mainly because graduates go off to work in education, government, and community service, sometimes taking many years before being financially stable enough to cut a healthy check to their alma mater.
McMillan says he's thankful for the donations the college has received, but the college still needs help in a lot of places. And as every college knows, more would be nice. "We really appreciate the support we've gotten," he says. "But I wish more wealthy citizens of the community who want to know `What can I do to help East Austin?' would invest in a scholarship at Huston-Tillotson, or plant me a tree, or come pave my yard. There's lots of other things folks can do with their businesses than write a million-dollar check."
