Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black Ivy League


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Brandon (talk) 07:58, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Black Ivy League

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This is a neologism sourced to one 1984 book. Similar AfDs for New Ivy League and Midwestern Ivy League resulted in deletion. (Also Articles for deletion/Canadian Ivy League (2nd nomination).) Since the article was first created in May 2009, the schools it lists as the Black Ivy league changed. A google search on "black ivy league" turns up media discussions of Ivy League faculty who happen to be African American, including the President of one Ivy League school who is African-American, and an organization called the Black Ivy Alumni League which is for Ivy League alumni who are African-American. I could not locate substantial secondary sources to support the wide-spread acceptance of this neologism. The content should be included in the articles for the individual schools. The content of the article does not identify any unique characteristics that could be used to identify a Black Ivy League school compared with other HBCUs. Also, a search of the US Patent and Trademark Office data base shows that both "Ivy League" and "The Ivy League" are registered trademarks. Racepacket (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Delete - ego-stroking article about some fine schools; no substantiation that this is a widely-used term. (Full disclosure: I went to Tennessee State University, an HBCU not on this list, and am proud of it.) -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  16:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to historically black colleges and universities, and even then, it should be emphasized that it's a reference used in some sources. Although I have heard this term before, and expected that it would turn up in a Google news search, it hasn't caught on.  One can find plenty of news articles about African-American students, graduates and professors of Harvard, Yale, and other Ivy League schools.  On the other hand, try to do a search of the terms "black Ivy League" and any of the schools on the list-- Howard, Morehouse, Fisk, etc. -- and it doesn't show up very often. Mandsford (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep: I can find a large number of press and book references, which makes me think the concept of a "Black Ivy League" is easily notable enough for a Wikipedia article, even if there is not a strictly defined membership of schools, and even if the article needs some improvement. The concept clearly predates the 1984 book currently cited as the source of the term.
 * --Milowent (talk) 21:59, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * All those cites will improve the article and likely change people's minds toward a keep. No offense, but I think that putting all of this in the discussion detracts from the good work that you've done.  Mandsford (talk) 22:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you do that collapse thing for it? I don't know how to do that yet.--Milowent (talk) 22:42, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Racepacket (talk) 04:21, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * One question is the currency of the term. In the 1950's these school attracted the very best African-American faculty and students, who were unjustly discriminated against by many schools.  However, by the 1960's the Ivy League actively recruited both African-American faculty and students, and today, the Ivy League offers such extensive financial aid packages that students from low income families can graduate debt-free.  So, today, faculty and students go to HBCU schools by choice, and the most prestigious colleges for people of color are also the most prestigious colleges for whites.  As a result, the term, and the concept behind it, may have grown obsolete. Eight of the 26 above references are from this century, but I have not checked to see if they all refer to prior times.  The most recent references paint a bleak future for the fate of these colleges, and note the competition from historically white schools. If the article survives, we need to address the time period in which the term was used and the group of schools to which it was applied.Racepacket (talk) 00:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The currency of the term is subject to debate (though a number of the references i found are from the past few years), but it still seems notable whether the term is used in a historical sense or a contemporary sense.--Milowent (talk) 05:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * For example, one of the sources, "Equal Justice Under Law: An Autobiography" By Constance Baker Motley, refers to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania as a part of the Black Ivy League. We have no way to define this group. 66.173.140.100 (talk) 04:16, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact that the term may not always be used to apply to the same colleges doesn't mean the term isn't notable, in my view. Most sources seem to cite the same seven colleges.  A few others are mentioned here and there.--Milowent (talk) 05:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)]
 * Do you agree that the concept is no longer current? If in the 21st century, the United States is a country where all Americans can share the same President, haven't we come to the point where African-Americans and white Americans can share the same Ivy League?  If an African-American student is accepted at both Howard and Harvard, where would s/he attend (particularly when Harvard has much larger financial aid resources)?  Also, the articles cited by Milowent indicate that these schools cannot compete with large-endowment schools for the best African-American faculty.  To Thurgood Marshall and the others being discussed in the cited articles, the "Black Ivy League" meant the "best schools available to me."  By that definition, it now means Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.  Also, how would we rewrite the article if we don't have any criteria for deciding which schools are in the "Black Ivy League?" I want very much to document higher education accurately, and have worked on some HBCU articles, but I don't know how we can approach this one without lapsing into boosterism, Separate but equal,  or arbitrary definitions. The current article appears to argue that creating a separate Harvard for blacks is just as good as the other Harvard, and then discusses football and greek societies. Racepacket (talk) 17:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not making a value judgment about the concept, I just see that it exists and has been referenced repeatedly in many sources. Many parts of the current article may not be verifiable and may have to go.  As for which schools are included, we cite the sources' lists, and can say something like, "at times other schools such as XXX have also been claimed to be Black Ivies."(add cites).  The concept of black ivies was indeed boosterism for schools that use(d) it for such purposes, just like people might refer to Duke or Vanderbilt as a Southern Ivy.--Milowent (talk) 19:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I respect your position and the excellent scholarship that went into the list. My problem is 1) that we don't have criteria. There are schools just as good as the Ivy League (Stanford and MIT, for example) but the definitional criteria is whether they are in a particular athletic league. and 2) that the term may have been passed by time.  I am still reading your sources, but the ones I have read speak in terms of the pre-1960's and admit that things are different today.  Deleting the page on those two grounds would avoid two unresolvable "hot button" issues.

Ref #2 and #16 are the same article in two places. Ref #19 discusses an abandoned proposal to create an athletic conference called "Black Ivy League." Ref #14 is an essay arguing that the phrase "Black Ivy League" is inappropriate. Ref #5 is hedged as "equivalent of a Black Ivy League." etc. Racepacket (talk) 23:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Per above keeps.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:00, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Milowent stated above that "Most sources seem to cite the same seven colleges"; however, of the 24 sources above, only 2 cite all of the seven colleges identified in this article as being the Black Ivy League. (I am disregarding the fact that one of the sources that does identify the seven is Bill Maxwell's article, which appears twice on the list.) There are 10 sources that identify one or more of the seven colleges as being Black Ivy League schools, which doesn't contradict the article but leaves open the question as to which other schools should be considered Black Ivies. The other sources aren't available in full online, or identify schools not classified by this article as Black Ivies as being in the Black Ivy League. So I would actually say that "few" sources can be found which cite the same seven colleges as being the Black Ivy League. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 10:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Neutral. While Wikipedia does have articles about other loosely defined groupings of colleges which are identified by an "ivy" name like Southern Ivies, they don't tend to go on in such detail because those groupings are loosely defined and there is no definitive statement as to which colleges are in or out. That is the case with the Black Ivy League; note that the sources quoted above identify Morgan State University (twice), Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Clark College and Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), Morris Brown College, "Gannon" (not sure what this refers to -- Gannon University doesn't seem to be a historically black college), and Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) as Black Ivy League colleges, although this Wikipedia article does not identify them as such. I would recommend that the article be edited down to discuss the concept of a Black Ivy League, rather than to describe these particular schools as being the Black Ivy League. Also, the article should be shortened in other ways. For example, the "Athletics" section prominently features a list of football "classic" rivalry games, only one of which features two of the designated "Black Ivy" schools competing against each other, which tends to weaken the idea that these schools see themselves as a group. Similarly, the "Campus life" section does not indicate whether activities such as homecoming, fraternities, and sororities differ significantly at the Black Ivies from other historically black colleges and universities. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, don't merge. This is a rather hasty form of research, but a quick search of "black ivies" (in quotes) on Google Books gives 20 results while "hidden ivies" (in quotes) gives around the same; 18. Again, I know this is just a search, but it still shows that the term is being used. 174.18.1.200 (talk) 04:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep This article needs work, but it defines a topic, and if this is merged into the article, it might be re-created again someday when that section gets too large, should more information be founf. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:45, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.