Opinion | Bomb Threats Are Roiling Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Last week, officials at Fisk University ordered a lockdown while investigators responded to a bomb threat on campus. When I heard the news, my first reaction was a gut-wrenching sense of inevitability, and not just because more than 20 historically Black colleges and universities have received bomb threats in the last three weeks. White supremacists in the South — and far beyond the South — have been targeting Black schools and churches since these institutions were first founded.

By Feb. 2, just two days into Black History Month, the F.B.I. had identified six juveniles as persons of interest in the investigation. Since then, the bomb threats have continued unabated, in some cases against schools that had only just returned to uneasy normalcy after a previous threat. (Spelman College in Atlanta has had three this year. At Howard University in Washington, D.C., there have been four.)