On Sept. 11, students at multiple historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) opened their phones to alerts no one wants to see: Their campuses were on lockdown due to violent threats.
According to multiple reports, schools that received threats included Alabama State University, Virginia State University, Southern University and A&M College, Clark Atlanta University. Further, it was also reported that Spelman College, Hampton University, Bethune-Cookman University, and Florida A&M University locked down due to their proximity to colleges that received threats, or simply due to the number of other HBCUs that received threats.
These schools issued lockdown alerts via a mix of emails, campus alert system pages, and social media posts, urging students, staff, and faculty to shelter in place while law enforcement conducted sweeps of the premises.
Students described the experience as confusing and alarming. Kennedy Kyser, a sophomore at Hampton University, told NBC News she was in journalism class watching a 9/11 video when, at 10:15 a.m., someone announced there was a threat to the campus. “A lot of people were crying. There was a lot of confusion,” Kyser said to the outlet.
By late evening on Sept. 11, the FBI reported the threats were a “hoax”. There were no reports of explosives or weapons that had been found, and the lockdown alerts were lifted at all campuses as of the evening of Sept. 11. “The FBI is aware of hoax threat calls to a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” the bureau reported in a statement. “The FBI takes these threats very seriously because it puts innocent people at risk. While we have no information to indicate a credible threat, we will continue to work with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to gather, share, and act upon threat information as it comes to our attention.”
While officials confirmed there was no active danger, the threats caused significant disruption during the start of the school year. Louisiana Rep. Troy Carter released a statement in a press release saying, “These reprehensible acts are not only an attack on institutions of higher learning — they are an attack on our history, our culture, and the promise of opportunity that HBCUs represent for generations of students.”
The timing of the threats heightened anxiety on campus. The lockdowns came just one day after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, and on the 23-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Civil rights leader Al Sharpton addressed the events in a statement on Facebook: “We have seen too much violence on our campuses, whether it was the brazen murder of Charlie Kirk yesterday or the threats against these HBCUs today. Colleges and universities should be a place of free expression and debate in a way that’s respectful, engaging, and productive. What we have seen the last two days is anything but that.”
While Sept. 11’s HBCU lockdowns were treated as an isolated event, they still hit a nerve among many. In 2022, several HBCUs across the country were targeted with bomb threats, forcing evacuations and FBI investigations.
HBCUs were created to give Black teachers and students a safe space to learn at a time where other universities shut them out. Today, they continue to be a place of community and culture, but ongoing threats undermine the safety they were built to provide. For students, it’s not just about one day of canceled classes, it’s a reminder that their campuses are still singled out in ways that predominantly white institutions (PWIs) rarely are.