STANFORD, California -- Chantal Winston is a junior at Palo Alto's Gunn High School, where she helped to start Gunn's Black Student Union. She's thinking hard about college and spent part of Saturday attending a Black College Awareness Fair on the Stanford University campus.
"I've lived in Palo Alto all my life, and there are not many black students at Gunn," said Chantal. "It would be nice to go to a college or university where there are more people like me."
California is known for Stanford, a host of other elite private universities and the vast University of California and California State University systems. But the Golden State lacks an "HBCU," or Historically Black College and University, and many Bay Area high school students may overlook such colleges when applying to schools. There are 81 private HBCUs, all located east of the Mississippi River. The vast majority are in the South.
For 24 years, the Black College Awareness Fair has been sponsored by the Rho Delta Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., the first sorority founded by black women, at Howard University in 1908.
"We hold this event at Stanford for the exposure," said Saidah Grayson, a Stanford alum and president of the sorority's Rho Delta Omega campus, which is based in Palo Alto. "There are no HBCUs in California.
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