‘me too.’ launches HBCU Tour featuring founder Tarana Burke and scholar Dr. Yaba Blay

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Denise Beek
press@metoomvmt.org

The multi-city initiative, centered around creating safe and accountable communities for students, faculty and administrators, includes strategic convenings, panel discussions, a workshop for men and male-identifying individuals, and a fireside chat featuring special guests.

On April 2, 2019, ‘me too.’ will kick off a five-stop tour across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions of the U.S., bringing conversations around sexual violence and assault to comparatively under-resourced Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs). Tarana Burke and Yaba Blay, two of this decade’s most prominent figures within the intersections of dismantling racism and ending sexual violence, are pairing up to facilitate this critical work.

“Our goal is to reframe and expand the global conversation around sexual violence to speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of survivors,” Burke said. “Young Black people across the diaspora- along spectrums of class, gender, sexuality, and ability- rely on and invest in HBCUs not to just facilitate an education, but to keep them safe while doing so. We’re holding academic institutions accountable and harnessing our collective power to create strategies for sustained systemic change.”

As millions continue to focus on the pervasiveness of sexual violence, #metoo has continued to be a tool for galvanizing voices both affected by and advocating against this violent reality. College campuses are often the first line of defense in the work to create safe and accountable communities for their students and faculty, and as such, have been instrumental in the growth of this movement. However, HBCUs have not been able to move the work forward similarly on their campuses. The ‘me too.’ HBCU Tour will attempt to explore this disparity and set in motion some strategic actions to close the resource gap.

Beginning at Howard University in Washington, D.C., the ‘me too.’ HBCU tour experience will include strategic convenings with campus leaders (by invitation only); a workshop for men and male-identiying individuals; and fireside chats with Tarana Burke and Yaba Blay, featuring a special guest. Each institution will engage in campus-wide commitments to disrupt and preventing sexual assault.

The first of its kind for ‘me too,’ the tour is being supported by Lifetime Network, and The Root.

The first leg of the tour includes stops at:
April 2 – Howard University, Washington, DC (with special guest Darnell Moore)
April 9 – Atlanta University Center: Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, & Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA (with special guest Wade Davis)
April 12 – Alabama State University, Montgomery, AL (special guest TBD)
April 18 – North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC (with special guest Wade Davis)
April 19 – Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, FL (with special guest Wade Davis)

The tour will continue in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020. Stops and dates to be announced later this year. Registration for spring dates are now available at https://metooHBCU.eventbrite.com.

“It’s easy to get swept up in the energy of viral moments like the one we’re in with ‘me too.’, but we need not forget that they are spurred by real, grassroots movements, typically led by Black people and people of color,” Blay stated. “This college tour is a chance to move beyond social media and give young people a place to process, reflect, and strategize. We are committed to facilitating commitments from HBCUs and helping students and faculty create solutions for safer campuses and communities.”

For more information about ‘me too.’, visit metoomvmt.org. Requests for interviews can be sent to press@metoomvmt.org.

About Tarana Burke

For more than 25 years, activist and advocate Tarana J. Burke has worked at the intersection of racial justice and sexual violence. Fueled by commitments to interrupt sexual violence and other systemic inequalities disproportionately impacting marginalized people, particularly Black women and girls, Tarana has created and led various campaigns focused on increasing access to resources and support for impacted communities, including the ‘me too’ movement.

Since ‘me too.’, the movement she created more than ten years ago, went viral in 2017, Tarana has emerged as a global leader in the evolving conversation around sexual violence and the need for survivor-centered solutions. Her theory of using empathy to empower survivors is changing the way the nation and the world think about and engage with survivors, and her belief that healing isn’t a destination but a journey has touched and inspired millions of survivors who previously lived with the pain, shame and trauma of their assaults in isolation.

About Dr. Yaba Blay

Dr. Yaba Blay is the Dan Blue Endowed Chair in Political Science at North Carolina Central University. A native ethnographer and creative producer, her scholarship centers on global Black identities and the politics of embodiment, with particular attention to the lived experiences of Black women and girls. She is one of today’s leading voices on colorism and global skin color politics.

Applauded by O, The Oprah Magazine for her social media activism, Dr. Blay is the creator and producer of a number of online campaigns including #PrettyPeriod – a visual celebration of dark-skinned Black beauty – and #ProfessionalBlackGirl – a webseries and digital community dedicated to celebrating everyday, ‘around-the-way’ #BlackGirlMagic.

Dr. Blay is the author of (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race; and her voice is featured in A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond, a video installation on race relations exhibited in the National Museum of African American History & Culture.

About ‘me too.’

The ‘me too.’ movement was founded in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly Black women and girls, and other young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing.

In less than six months, because of the viral #metoo hashtag, a vital conversation about sexual violence has been thrust into the national dialogue. What started as local grassroots work has expanded to reach a global community of survivors from all walks of life and helped to de-stigmatize the act of surviving by highlighting the breadth and impact of sexual violence worldwide.

Additional Information

Sexual violence at HBCUs

• Approximately 40% of Black women report coercive contact of a sexual nature by age 18. Source: National Black Women’s Health Project.
• 1 out of 5 women who attend HBCUs will experience sexual assault. In 90% of sexual assaults that occur at HBCUs, the victim knows their attacker, yet fewer than 20% of HBCU survivors report to crisis centers, because most claim that their assaults were not “serious enough to report.” Source: endrapeoncampus.org.
• 9.7 % of female HBCU undergraduates report experiencing sexual assault since entering college. The rate is 13.7% at PWIs (Predominantly White Institutions). Source: The Sexual Assault of Undergraduate Women at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Journal of interpersonal violence..
• From a 2008 study of undergraduate women at four HBCUs, 69.2% of forced sexual assault victims disclosed the incident to “someone close,” while only 9.9% reported the incidents to law enforcement. Source: The Historically Black College and University Campus Sexual Assault (HBCU-CSA) Study.
• The same 2008 study revealed that 75.6% of all victims of incapacitated sexual assault had been drinking prior to the incident, as were 23.1% of all victims of forced sexual assault.
• Of the 105 HBCUs, there are six that have instituted a campus women’s resource center: Spelman College, Bennett College, and Howard University, North Carolina Central University, Lincoln University, and Tennessee State University. Source: The Emergence of Women’s Centers at HBCUs: Centers of Influence and the Confluence of Black Feminist Epistemology and Liberal Education.