Black History Month: '80s a significant decade for African Americans at SEMO

The first Black member of the Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents, the Rev. Dr. Samuel W. Hylton Jr. was appointed in 1987.

The longtime St. Louis clergyman died in 2018 at the age of 91.

According to Southeast's Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, African American enrollment increased to nearly 800 students during the 1980s, with many Black students recruited from the St. Louis area.

Among the African American graduates of the university during that period were Cedric Kyle, "Cedric the Entertainer," an actor, comedian and talk show host reared in Caruthersville, Missouri, who graduated with a communications degree.

Other notables such as Pat Colon, Otto Porter, Jewel Crawford, Terri Mead and Joe Torrie also matriculated to Southeast during the time, according to the university.

The inaugural campus-wide breakfast in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was held in 1984.

Black celebrities such as Alex Haley, Julian Bond, Dick Gregory and Shirley Chisholm came to Southeast's main campus to help commemorate Black History Month during the decade.

Today

Black enrollment, according to the most recent information available, is near its all-time highest level.

A record 873 African Americans attended Southeast classes in the fall of 2005.

In the Fall of 2020, the last semester for which statistics are available, 836 African American students were attending classes at Southeast -- 792 undergraduates and 44 enrolled in graduate studies, according to the university's Office of Institutional Research.

Since the 1980s, the lowest Black enrollment at Southeast was 373 in the fall of 1994.

Note: The reporter on this story is a part-time instructor at Southeast Missouri State University.