Speaker recalls black history and travels

The educator's special interest is historically black colleges and universities.
By SEAN BARRON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- For the past 28 years, Darwin Huey has included the Selma, Ala., Tuskegee Institute and many other historically significant destinations in his travels.
Huey, an associate professor of education at Westminster College, took time Wednesday to give a presentation outlining how his faith, travel through the South, and interests in education, literature and sports came together.
In "Lifting the Veil," at Westminster's Wallace Memorial Chapel, Huey mixed black history and personal accounts, and shared with about 120 students and faculty how the events inspired him.
"I was 4 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, 5 when nine black students had the audacity to demand equal education [at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.,] and 13 when Martin Luther King led the march from Selma to Montgomery," Huey said.
Lesson for life
As a teenager, his mother taught him that "it doesn't matter what color you are, as long as you're a good person," Huey recalled. During that time, Huey added, he listened to CKLW, then a Detroit-based Top 40 station, and was exposed to Motown. His teenage years also were marked by the race riots that broke out after the assassination of King and by racial hatred, Huey said.
Later, Huey made it a habit to travel with his wife, Sally, and two daughters, Rachel and Bethany, both of whom visited Selma and other places as youngsters. He also spent time at Richwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., one of the oldest baseball fields in the country, and recalled the right-field bleachers as the only seating for black people.
Huey said that he later became interested in the history of black colleges and universities, many of which were founded by the Methodist and Protestant churches during Reconstruction. Today, there are about 79 four-year such colleges and universities, most of which are in the South, he said.
About 65 percent of black doctors and 35 percent of black lawyers attended Howard University, Morehouse College in Atlanta, Florida A & amp;M and other historically black colleges and universities, he said. Graduates include Rosa Parks, Alabama State; Langston Hughes, Lincoln; former running back Walter Payton, Jackson State; and former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, Howard University.
Huey spent part of his talk sharing headlines he made up to honor other figures he said influenced him, such as Wilma Rudolph, one of 22 siblings, who suffered scarlet fever and other maladies as a child but went on to win three Olympic gold medals; and Dr. Kenneth Clark, a psychologist who used black and white dolls as part of the "doll study" to show the harmful effects segregation has on children.
Huey said he still travels as often as possible, which includes one big trip annually.
"I'm on a mission to go every place," he joked.