Malika Moore’s bags for Baltimore were nearly packed. She had secured a plane ticket from Cincinnati, made a hotel reservation and had a hair appointment just before her afternoon flight. She was ready for homecoming at Morgan State University.
Then she learned of the incident on campus Tuesday, when five people — four of them students — were injured in a shooting, causing her to “lose my breath for a minute,” she said. Almost instantly she realized that the weekend she had anticipated for the last year was in flux.
So, when it was announced Wednesday that homecoming at the historically Black college would not go on — an unprecedented occurrence — Moore said she “sort of lost my breath again, but in a different way.”
“Homecoming is a special thing,” the 1981 graduate said. “I have missed maybe five homecomings since I finished at Morgan. That tells you everything.”
In making the announcement, Morgan State president David Wilson said that “regrettably for the very first time in Morgan’s history, all activities planned around homecoming will be either cancelled or postponed until the perpetrator(s) of this atrocity have been found and brought to justice.”
Those activities included an array of parties, the annual pep rally and parade that passes through the local community, MSU’s 39th annual gala and, of course, the football game.
Moore learned of the cancellation from a friend she was planning to meet in Baltimore. “It’s a tradition: My friends who were in school with me — my closest friends — would meet there and have the most beautiful time enjoying all the activities, reminiscing about things that happened when we were students and seeing old classmates,” she said. “It’s a beautiful time that is on the calendar just about every year. So, to miss it — to have it canceled — is sad.”
For alumni and students of HBCUs, homecoming is far more than just about the game. It is a “rite of passage that, to me, confirms the impact of your college experience,” said Mike Smith, a 1999 graduate of Tennessee State University in Nashville. “I met my wife at homecoming. I feel alive when I go back, seeing old friends and sharing about each other’s lives. I didn’t even go to Morgan State, but to hear about an HBCU having to cancel a homecoming makes me feel some kind of way. It’s very unfortunate.”
While there is disappointment about the homecoming postponement, Moore said she was not mad about it, but sad. “We should not have to go through this. Those students should not have to go through this. There should not be people coming on our campus or any campus creating this kind of situation where students are shot.”
Alexis Wray, a North Carolina A&T graduate, who writes extensively about the HBCU experience for Reckon, an online news organization, said the impact of homecoming is immeasurable. But the Morgan State case is the result of an extenuating circumstance.
“HBCU homecomings are crucial to campus culture and life,” Wray said. “While it’s a time to honor the past, appreciate the present and celebrate the future, what is most important here is the safety of students. Shootings on HBCU campuses during homecoming season have become too normal. Morgan State taking action is setting a precedent for what’s most important — and that is the students.”
Last year, a shooting occurred at an unofficial homecoming party in front of the Morgan State student center, and the year before, a student was injured after being shot on campus. Other schools, including Clark Atlanta University and Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, also saw shootings on campus around homecoming festivities.
About six weeks ago shots also rang near Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida. In this case, the shooter was seen gearing up by alert students who notified campus police. The suspect fled the school grounds and eventually traveled a few blocks away to a Dollar General store and shot and killed Black people in a racist explosion.
“Our president, at our convocation this week, mentioned keeping Morgan State in our prayers, knowing that we had just gone through something that could have happened here a month ago,” said student Jordan Weeks. “It triggered those emotions and those traumatic feelings of uncertainty and fear,” she continued. “I know what the students at Morgan feel. It’s scary. It could have been our university and we could have been mourning the same way that they are.”
While classes were canceled in Morgan State the day after the shooting, the School of Global Journalism and Communications’ Board of Visitors met on campus. Garry D. Howard, a board member, said the school grounds were “serene. It was quiet.”
He said convening despite the shooting was symbolic of the strength of the school. “It is a smart decision, a cogent decision to cancel activities in light of authorities not having arrested those involved in the shooting,” Howard said. “But what I see in Morgan State is strength, from its leadership to its students. And while you can’t even quantify the importance of homecoming to an HBCU, it is clear that the president is putting the safety of the students, alumni and anyone associated with the school first.”
Tarek DeLavallade, a 1998 Morgan State graduate who has a nephew at the school, was going to miss homecoming because of a golf tournament he is hosting this weekend in Atlanta. He said he was not happy that homecoming was put off because of violence on campus, but he understood.
“Dr. Wilson is a thinker,” DeLavallade said. “And if he feels that this is the best thing, then it’s the best thing. And there’s loss of revenue with this decision. There are vendors. There are thousands of people who bought flights and booked hotels and everything else. However, there’s nothing more important than the safety of our alumni and students and anyone else who would be there.”
A major part of homecoming is the Saturday morning parade. Saresa Pleasant, who lives about a mile from the campus, said she was at Morgan State for a meeting a few days before the shooting. She said the neighboring community would feel the absence of not having homecoming.
“It’s just devastating that someone went onto that campus and injured those students,” Pleasant, a Baltimore native, said. “Homecoming is a time when we all come together,” she added. “The community should be able to celebrate an HBCU that’s producing great citizens. Many of us didn’t go there, but we feel a part of the school and we feel a part especially around homecoming. To not be able to do that this year — because of something so ugly — is devastating.”
