Inaugural HBCU Festival Hosted In Charlotte: 'Great Opportunity To Educate People About What HBCUs Are'

By Kyra Alessandrini

The first HBCU Festival took place for the very first time in Charlotte, N.C. earlier this month. The event celebrated HBCU culture and offered educational opportunities to the community and their families.

“We brought together all HBCU cultures in one place for the first ever inaugural HBCU Festival,” Nasir Jones, a North Carolina A&T alum and one of the event’s organizers, told WCNC.

The event featured HBCU gear, food, music and several vendors throughout the day. It also had board games and Trivia for Us, which focuses on Black history and culture.

“It’s a great opportunity to educate people about what HBCUs are, the value of them, the community that they bring,” Deydra Bringas, who works for the brand, said.

“This is a community, this is family,” Shakira Hodges, Bringas’s coworker, added. “Learn some things — we also have a Trivia for Us game, so that’s all about Black history, Black culture.”

The goal of the event was to provide knowledge about HBCUs and inform the community about the opportunities available to them.

“Where people can know what’s going on, and gain that awareness about how important it is in today’s society to know these things, and what can we give back to the community to help aid these causes,” Jones said of the reasons why the festival was organized.

The festival also offered scholarships.

“We gave four for the HBCU college fair,” Jones said. “So we started right there, four students randomly — you sign up for the college fair, they will receive $1,000, just working towards books, tuition, anything of that nature.”