Despite Great Strides, HBCUs and NCAA-Recognized Athletic Conferences Face Challenges - Higher Education: In 1912, nine college administrators gathered on the campus of Hampton Institute to discuss collegiate athletics at Black institutions of higher learning. The result of this meeting was the formation of the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the first athletic conference designated for Black collegiate sports.
A century later, the CIAA (now the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association) is still around and is one of four NCAA-recognized conferences made up completely or predominantly of historically Black colleges and universities. The others include: the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, formed in 1913; the Southwestern Athletic Conference, formed in 1920; and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, formed in 1970.
At the time, the formation of an athletic league composed specifically of institutions designed for African-Americans made sense, if only as an extension of the logic that formed HBCUs in the first place. African-Americans were shunned from all of mainstream American life in the early part of the 20th century. And in the South, where the majority of Black colleges and universities were located, the Black community may as well have been on another planet.
