After Bomb Threats, Historically Black Colleges Lift Warnings

(Bloomberg) -- Several historically Black colleges and universities across the U.S. on Tuesday lifted warnings to students and faculty against coming to campus after receiving bomb threats earlier in the day.

After campus and local police swept the campus at Jackson State University in Mississippi and gave an all-clear sign, the school resumed operations Tuesday. Orders were also lifted at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Tougaloo College in Mississippi and Kentucky State University in Frankfort, according to school statements.

“The recent threats to HBCUs across the country are a shameless attempt to dampen our sense of safety and freedom by attacking locations traditionally considered a haven for all pursuing an education in a nurturing environment,” Jackson State University President Thomas Hudson said in a statement on the school's website.

The latest threats, coming on the first day of Black history month, follow similar incidents that targeted HBCUs earlier this year.

Sarah Vinson, a physician and forensic psychiatrist, said she doesn't think the threats against the HBCU campuses are a coincidence given the current environment, including global protests decrying anti-Black police violence and systemic racism in 2020. The demonstrations were part of a decade of Black Lives Matter activism, building since the 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

Racist and extremist behavior has also been on the rise, including the deadly “Unite the Right” White supremacist rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

“HBCUs are the one place in this country where Black people go and they don't have to worry about those things and can just exist in a way that White people can in their experience of America more broadly,” said Vinson, founder of Lorio Forensics in Atlanta. “So I really hope that we understand this is part of the same problem, and that these these threats are taken really seriously.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in an emailed statement that it “is aware of the series of bomb threats around the country and we are working with our law enforcement partners to address any potential threats.”