The Breakfast Club - IDKMYDE: The Ultimate Flip

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In this episode of #IDKMYDE, B-Daht discusses how one of the 1st HBCU’s was originally a prison!           IG: @_idkmyde_                 @BdahtTV                 @blackeffectSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Had enough of this country? Ever dreamt about starting your own? I planted the flag. This is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. Or maybe not. No country willingly gives up their territory. Oh my God.

What is that? Bullets. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. We need help! That's Escape from Z-A- Stan on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be that here and being a product of Winston Salem state university. I thought I was very familiar with Virginia union university. I mean,

we play the Panthers in football, basketball, all the sports, highly competitive. I mean, you can almost say they're our rivals, but what I didn't know was that Virginia Union went from incarcerating black folks to educating black folks. Sort of. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know.

Maybe you didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. To understand how Virginia Union was founded, you got to know who Robert Lumpkin and Mary are.

See, in the 1830s, Robert Lumpkin, he purchased Mary when she was a child. By the time she was 13, she had given birth to Rob's first child. Then she messed around and gave him FOMO. Robert Lumpkin was 27 years older than Mary. That meant when she was 13, having his first child, old Rob was 40. In 1844, Rob bought a jail called Lumpkin's Jail. They said it was one of the seven most cruel prisons in the South. They gave it a nickname, the Devil's Half Acre.

In 1866, Rob died. See, by then, Mary and her kids were living in Philadelphia. They relocated there during the Civil War. But in his will, Rob left the jail to Mary. But she ain't wanting to do with that prison. So along came an abolitionist minister. His name was Nathaniel Culver. And he was looking for a space to start a seminary for formerly enslaved individuals and Mary very gladly leased him the land see the northern teachers of that time they found it necessary not just to educate the former enslaved individuals but the white folks in the south that hadn't been educated to the same degree as the white folks in the north as well now this is all post-civil war so once Clove gets a hold of

the Devil's Half Acre, his workers go in there and tear up all the cells. They take the bars off and they turn the cells into classrooms. There, they started teaching black kids and birthed Richmond Theological Schools of Freedmen. It even got a new nickname from the Devil's Half Acre to God's Half Acre. The Richmond Theological School of Freedmen became the first institution of higher education for black folks in Virginia. In 1932, they merged with the first college of African-American women in Virginia and became one of the first established HBCUs. Virginia Union University. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.

I didn't know. Had enough of this country? Ever dreamt about starting your own? I planted the flag. This is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete.

Or maybe not. No country willingly gives up their territory. Oh my God. What is that? Bullets. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. That's Escape from Z-A-Q-istan. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.