staticshock
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nikka DC aint even the most influential city on the east coast 
D.C Is the most influential place in America
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staticshock
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I agree with you OP. Not for the reasons you stated.
But I'm sorry, this had me dying.
Call a city under the mason dixon line a "northern city" brehs.
DC's also had the biggest influence on black education and academia
black politics
black professions
someone you look up to has ties to howard. or someone that that person looks up to has ties to howard.
on a national scale though, wall street dictates capitol hill which dictates the rest of america.
that might be true for where yall stay, but the most influential HBCUs in Atlanta will always be FAMU, Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta.
Even Alabama State and Alabama A&M has more "pull" or whatever you want to call it in the south
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Do you think there’s an inferiority complex of Howard? My homegirl in NOLA sounds a lot like you and hates Howard
there is a general inferiority complex when it comes to Howard and Spellhouse IMO. I never got involved in it because I didn’t grow up looking at Howard as shyt “Mecca”, I feel like most people who grow up in the DMV don’t but once I ended up there I started to see how real HBCUs and “class/rank” was to other parts of the country.
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staticshock
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no..its just that Howard is far as hell. We all know Howard is one of the top HBCUs, but we have Morehouse and Spelman in our own backyards literally,and they're also some of the top HBCUs. so nobody really checks for Howard like that down here.
Not taking anything away from howard because I consider it to be among the best HBCUs with Xavier, Morehouse, Spelman, Tuskegee, NCAT and a couple others, but unless you have family in DC, or you graduated from Howard and moved to Atlanta, then it doesnt get talked about like that down here.
now keep in mind I work in the education field, so im around alumni of all types of schools, and I also work with a high school band and have talked to the kids about where they wanted to attend college.
in no particular order, ive worked with alum from these schools, seen these schools on license plates, and have heard kids say they want to go to these schools more than i've met a Howard alum or someone who wants to go there
Spelman
Clark
Morehouse
FAMU
Bethune Cookman
Jackson State
Southern
Alabama State
Alabama A&M
Miles
South Carolina State
Benedict
Xavier
Dillard
Talladega
Tuskegee
Fort Valley
Albany State
Savannah State
Alcorn
and thats not even including the white colleges like UGA, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and Auburn. Im sure a few Atlanta kids enroll in Howard every year, but it's reach isnt big down here like that
That's true. My great grandfather graduated from what was then Atlanta University. He wanted my grandmother to go down to Spelman. She wasn't trying to go to the south and ended up at Oberlin but he thought the Atlanta schools to be superior.
What you state is facts for Atlanta. You're not getting a prized job down there without ties to one of the local schools. Outside Atlanta however, Howard's brand reigns supreme. Because of government jobs, the District was a mecca for blacks from around the country a century before Atlanta. Howard was not only a drawing point, so was Dunbar, which was considered to be the top ranking black high school in the country. If you were ambitious and upwardly mobile and wanted the best education, DC was the place to be at the turn of the century which is why Howard enjoys a broader national brand. DC as a Mecca had a 100 year head start over Atlanta. If your folks was middle class at the turn of the century in any city outside of Atlanta, 85% chance they had some ties to Howard than having ties to the AUC.
Add to that that half the black greek lettered organizations were founded on its campus plus because of its alumni, most of whom historically went to Ivies for graduate school, it has deep ties to wall street and the corporate environment, Howard plays host to many CBC ALC events, I just think Howard operates on another level nationally then the AUC.
I don't have any direct lineage family that attended Howard. My own family (at least my maternal side) was big on attending small liberal arts colleges out east that was accepting blacks before most of the HBCUs were founded. The only HBCU that they had ties to was Fisk. But even still, since I was little, I always heard about Howard. If it wasn't for my great grandfather and his family being from Atlanta, I probably would not have heard of the AUC until much later.
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I didn't know there was an inferiority complex between Howard and the AUC.
Howard and Hampton on the other hand.
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Atlanta suffers from an inferiority complex in general. And I'm not hating on Atlanta in the least. My great-grandfathers family is well ensconced at the top of the black Atlanta business community so I've always followed and had insight into developments in the city even though I was not personally born there. As a southern city though, it suffers from a major identity problem.
Also, Howard sends the largest number of blacks to medical school and between Meharry and Howard Medical, graduates 80% of black doctors.
Also, Howard produces the highest percentage of black lawyers in the country. Harvard is second.
Also, Howard produces the highest percentage of black lawyers in the country. Harvard is second.
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get these nets
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The 3 categories you listed education/academia, Black politics,Black professions
From what I've seen.......the legacy tradition of HBCU graduates has ended or will end for a lot of families, even the ones whose last names are almost synonymous with the schools. It is now true for Howard.
PWIs have a greater pull on top Black students.Greater current cache for students from college educated backgrounds, and bigger endowments and resources to assist students who are first generation college students.Undergrad + Graduate level. Two schools that are consistently among the top 10 in the country are in the greater Chicago area, U. of Chicago and Northwestern.
The resources of those institutions also provide a bigger draw for professors than Howard.
Politics- Washington, Jackson, Braun, Obama emerged from Black political base in Chicago. Each case was a remarkable feat in it's own right, but when you see that this happened from the same area within the past 40 years, you'd be hard pressed to identify a comparable city.The national seat of power is in DC but I'm not familiar with the influence of Black power brokers or donors who are from DC.
Professions. I don't have figures in front of me, but I always assumed that the affluent Black areas in metro DC are mostly filled with workers from the public sector. Chicago has had a visible community of professionals and entrepreneurs since Blacks began arriving there en masse. I know that there is old money in both places, but I assume that Chicago is the greater magnet for businessmen.
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On a cultural level, despite BET being launched in DC area.....they didn't promote the unique aspects of local culture to the world. More writers,playwrights, media companies, media figures, entertainers, dances, and musical genres have gone national from Chicago than DC in the past 50 years.
Rob Johnson (BET's founder) also grew up in nearby rockford, il