Welcome to The Yard: UATL’s new home for HBCU coverage

For the past few weeks, historically Black colleges and universities have been at the center of a cultural conversation.

Much of the attention has been driven by the return of “A Different World,” the landmark television series that introduced generations of viewers to the fictional Hillman College and helped shape how America saw HBCU life.

When Netflix brought Hillman back nearly 40 years later, UATL went all in.

We explored the show’s impact on HBCUs and Black culture. We talked to current students about what “A Different World” got right and what has changed. We examined the issues the show tackled, revisited its complicated first season and sat down with original cast members Jasmine Guy, Cree Summer and Darryl M. Bell to talk about the legacy they helped create.

But for UATL, the conversation about HBCUs didn’t begin with Hillman.

And it won’t end there.

Today, we are launching The Yard, UATL’s new home for coverage of historically Black colleges and universities, with a particular focus on the extraordinary collection of institutions right here in Atlanta.

The name is intentional.

When I was a student at North Carolina Central University, we called our campus “the yard.”

You didn’t just go to campus. You walked across the yard, hung out on the yard and found out what was happening on the yard.

The phrase is familiar across HBCU culture, a shorthand for the physical place where so much of college life happens.

But the yard is more than a place. It is where you see people, meet people and sometimes become somebody. It is where traditions are passed down, friendships are formed, debates break out, organizations recruit, music plays and where everybody seems to know your business.

That is what we want The Yard to be: a place where you can come to understand what is happening across HBCU communities.

And there may be no city in America where that coverage makes more sense than Atlanta.

The Atlanta University Center, the largest concentration of Black colleges in the country, has been part of the fabric of this city for generations.

Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown College sit within walking distance of one another, while the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Interdenominational Theological Center add to a remarkable concentration of Black educational institutions.

These schools have produced civil rights leaders, doctors, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, politicians, scholars and generations of Atlantans who have helped define this city.

And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been here covering them.

That history matters. So does who we are today.

UATL was created to tell stories about Black Atlanta with depth, context and cultural fluency. HBCUs sit naturally at the center of that mission.

Our newsroom includes HBCU graduates and journalists who have spent years covering the Atlanta University Center, higher education, Black culture, sports and the communities surrounding these institutions.

The Yard gives us an opportunity to bring all of that together.

Leading that coverage will be Brooke Howard, The Yard’s principal reporter, who will be on the campuses and in the community telling the stories of HBCU life in Atlanta.

But The Yard is bigger than one beat or one reporter. Jason Armesto will bring his expertise in higher education and policy, Chris Daniel will help us tell the stories of the people and culture that make these campuses distinctive and senior sports editor Rod Beard will lead our HBCU sports coverage.

Education editor Eric Stirgus and I will help guide the coverage, and we’ll draw on the reporting, photography, video, data and expertise of journalists across UATL and the AJC.

We will cover the big things: leadership, money, enrollment, policy and the challenges facing HBCUs at a moment when higher education itself is changing.

But we also want to cover what makes these places special.

The students. The traditions. The bands. The rivalries. The professors. The alumni. The homecomings. The debates happening in classrooms and dorm rooms. The people doing remarkable things before the rest of the world knows their names. Some social media drama.

And, yes, Rod Beard is going to bring us HBCU football.

We are launching The Yard during SpelHouse Homecoming for a reason.

Few events capture the energy, history and cultural reach of Atlanta’s HBCU community quite like the annual gathering of Morehouse and Spelman students, alumni, families and friends.