NSBE Founders Day: Growth Through Adversity

April 12: a great day in history for NSBE, the National Society of Black Engineers. Today, we celebrate Founders Day. It was on this day in 1975 that 134 African American engineering students from 28 higher education institutions across the country gathered in a room on the campus of Purdue University to establish a national organization committed to increasing the recruitment and retention of Black engineering students in the U.S. Their goal was to empower Black communities, and make progress toward the unmet goals of the Civil Rights Movement, by increasing African Americans’ knowledge and proficiency in STEM.

Today, on NSBE Founders Day, we honor and recognize the work of the six African American Purdue engineering undergraduates — Edward A. Coleman, Anthony Harris, Brian Harris, Stanley L. Kirtley, John W. Logan Jr. and George A. Smith — and their faculty advisor, Arthur J. Bond, Ph.D., who used their talent, drive and influence to make that first National Meeting of the National Society of Black Engineers possible. We also take this time to honor and acknowledge those who built the foundation NSBE was built on, people such as Edward Barnette and Fred Cooper, who worked with Dr. Bond to launch the Purdue student group, the Black Society of Engineers, which evolved into NSBE.

Seeing our founders’ vision expand and solidify as it has over the past 49-plus years, to become an organization with more than 20,000 members in 700-plus chapters across the U.S. and Internationally, and witnessing the triumph of our 50th Annual Convention, which brought an all-time record 18,000-plus attendees to Atlanta, is cause for celebration.

But, in truth, while I honor our founders and our legacy, I also carry the weight of what it means to lead an organization like NSBE, and I want to use my voice today to address some of my concerns.

Stuck in Time

I recently read a book titled, “An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created,” by journalist and biographer Santi Elijah Holley. This volume, which I highly recommend, is about the Black Panther movement and the people within the movement who took on the name Shakur: Assata Shakur, Afeni & Lumumba Shakur and all the others who gave the name a powerful resonance.

There are many passages of this book that affected me deeply, but the strongest gut punch was a memo written in 1970 by then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It directed the surveillance of Black Americans, with a particular preoccupation with Black students:

“Increased campus disorders involving Black students pose a definite threat to the Nation’s stability and security....”

What struck me most about this statement was the context it provided for the history of NSBE. The student movement at Purdue that gave rise to NSBE was in full swing when Hoover penned his memo on Nov. 4, 1970, and our founders, who arrived on campus a few years later, were in its crosshairs. I honor their bravery and resilience, which was relevant and necessary for those times, and for such a time as this.

Without doubt, NSBE has made progress to celebrate during our decades-long mission. But in many ways, our organization, and our people, seem stuck in time.

I started this writing with a desire to discuss social justice, and the evolution of NSBE in this space, but as I reflect on how we began, and how far we have come, I am reckoning with a painful reality that while there has been progress,? the reality is: we are close to where we began.

• While we’ve grown the number of Black students earning bachelor’s degrees in engineering in this country from 3,500 to 6,100 during the last seven years — making progress toward our 10k Goal — Black engineering graduates are still only 4.7% of the nation’s total. Compare that 4.7% to our goal of 13.6%, which is the number we need to reach to achieve parity with our percentage of the U.S. population.
• Employment of Black engineering, computer science and math graduates has increased by 115,000 workers since 2017. But those graduates are still only 4.6% of the nation’s engineering, computer science and math graduates employed.
• We’ve made small gains recently in the number of Black male STEM graduates employed in the U.S., which is good. But Black women have actually lost significant numbers in the workplace. The number of Black women engineering, computer science and math graduates in the U.S. workforce has declined by 25,000 since 2017.

Moreover, the past year has seen the start of a new era of challenges to diversity, equity and inclusion. Since 2023, 65 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in this country. Eight have become law. What we seem to be witnessing is the systemic dismantling of programs, policies and practices that foster a sense of belonging on college campuses for students with minoritized identities. And the shock wave is impacting students in K–12 as well. We believe these intentional efforts are being used to attempt to stifle the collective drive toward equity and justice in our educational system.

My work as a guide, mentor and servant of the talented student leadership of NSBE imbues me with courage and pride, but, in truth, I often worry about the future of our young generation of Black community leaders. I’ve witnessed the so-called progress after the racial reckoning of 2020, but I don't believe the initiatives that arose after the killing of George Floyd have left us in a better place. Within my own family, I’m concerned that my great-nephew, a college student, may find himself in harm’s way because of the same kind of racism that could have gotten his grandfather — my older brother — killed more than 60 years earlier.

I stand here now understanding that I am looking into a mirror of yesteryears. I once believed affirmative action, DEI, laws, guidelines and human care wouldn’t allow our nation to go backwards. Well, the reality is: we are close to where we began.

So knowing that, how does NSBE chart a path forward? It occurs to me that perhaps the existential threats that confronted our founders and charter members in 1975 are also the very things that have held us together, connected ?as an organization, for nearly 50 years. Perhaps our challenges are the tenets we will continue to stand on for the next 50 years.

Today. April 12, 2024, is a day to honor the legacy left by our founders, who took bold steps almost 50 years ago, not knowing what the outcomes would be, possibly not even knowing that what they were doing would one day be considered pioneering or brave. Decades later, we laud them for the pursuit, planning and passion of what happened on this day in 1975. I don’t know if it was raining that day in West Lafayette, Indiana, or what was playing on the radio. I’d like to think the background music was Marvin’s Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and that our founders were drawn to the words of the soundtrack that brought awareness to the forces shaping American culture in the 1970s, delivering a call-to-action sermon in song. There are many accounts of what happened on that day many years ago. A startup named Microsoft turned eight days old. Vietnam was preparing for the fall of Saigon. And six Black men made good on their promise to begin building a village to support Black people in STEM — not knowing that the world would deliver the same injustices decades later; not knowing that advisors, deans and academic leaders would be forced to choose between shrinking back and limiting their voice to maintain their employment, or continue to withstand, and watch the dissolution of the departments designed to lift the students and leaders who are a reflection of them. Our founders, the Chicago Six, came together to draw a line in the sand that would bring us to this day.

How dare we not do the same.

NSBE’s leadership is working to ensure the passion for our work continues, as we begin the yearlong 50th anniversary celebration we’ve named NSBE Gold. The events culminate with our 51st Annual Convention in the hometown of our founders, Chicago, next March.

NSBE: Growing with adversity.

NSBE: #EngineeredToWithstand.