Joining the Spelman Crowd (Article)

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America's Best Colleges 2008: Joining the Spelman Crowd -- U.S.News & World Report

Joining the Spelman Crowd

College gave her a deeper respect for her roots

By Marc Silver
Posted 8/17/2007

Asha Jennings could have had a free ride at UCLA or Berkeley. Georgetown wooed her, too. But she was smitten with Spelman, a historically black women's college in Atlanta that offered a half-tuition scholarship.

Her guidance counselor said four years at Georgetown or UCLA would put her on better footing to pursue her long-term goal of law school. But the high schooler from Sacramento, Calif., didn't care to be "a freak of nature—the smart black girl" in a crowd of white students. She wanted to join a community of like-minded African-American undergrads and to immerse herself in black history and culture.

At Spelman, Jennings began to understand "where we came from and where we're going." She discovered that black feminism dated to the 1800s. She added her own chapter to the movement, founding IMAGE (Igniting Media Accountability for Gender Exploitation), which battles nasty references to women in hip-hop music.

And her guidance counselor's advice? Totally bogus, she says. After graduating in 2004, she enrolled at New York University's law school. This spring, she was studying for the Georgia bar.