Taking back the hoodie: How #BlackandHooded celebrates black graduates

Best friends Anthony Wright and Brian Allen want the world to see what they know exists — black students graduating with master's and doctoral degrees.

So last year they created a hashtag — #BlackandHooded — and encouraged black graduates to post social media photos of themselves wearing their academic hoods.

The campaign exploded. Hundreds of photos poured into an Instagram account and showed up on Twitter. The two friends say the hashtag has been used more than 10,000 times on Facebook alone.

And #BlackandHooded is back this year for a new class of graduates.

Allen and Wright met as undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Last year Wright received a master's degree from Indiana University; Allen earned his from Columbia University, where he is a first-year doctoral student.

The hooded reference in the hashtag isn't just about graduation regalia. The men had Trayvon Martin in mind, the black teenager who was wearing a hoodie when he was shot and killed in Florida in 2012.

“Oftentimes, the images people associate with a hoodie are negative, as if it somehow represents aggressive or suspicious behavior,” Wright told a University of Wisconsin-Madison publication.

“We wanted to juxtapose that image with one of a black person in a master’s hood. It’s a way to redefine the image, although I want to be clear that there’s nothing wrong with people wearing hoodies. This just adds another positive image to the conversation.”

Representing black students like this "is huge," Wright told Madison365.com last year as the campaign launched.

“A lot of black students have aspirations to go to graduate school but no one to look up to, talk to about their journey, connect with about their specific degree and university," said Wright, who is now a career adviser at the University of Wisconsin's School of Business.

"The hashtag allows for black graduates across the nation and world to serve as that connection and that opportunity for black undergraduates to see people like them pursuing their post-bachelor’s degrees.”

Kyree Brooks posted a photo of himself on Facebook using the hashtag. He earned a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin.

"Males I grew up with had no intention of getting a master's degree," Brooks told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "It's important to see people like yourself and others in educational spaces. It's about planting the seed, believing you can be there, too."

Allen told Madison365 he didn't understand what graduate school was about when he started thinking about applying.

“I didn’t have many mentors or folks who I could reach out to who were in graduate school at the time," he told the website.

"I think that lack of representation really limited my scope of knowledge around what a post-secondary education degree meant.”

The hashtag took off so quickly that black students posted photos of themselves in their hoods from graduation ceremonies years ago, according to the Journal Sentinel.

And so many photos flooded in that Wright and Allen created a website, Blackandhooded.com, which has become a network, a way for current black graduate students to connect with black professionals, the Journal reports.

Nearly 400 students and alumni from more than 50 universities are now linked through the website, according to the men.

They raised money for scholarships, too, awarding four $500 scholarships to black graduate students last year, and are raising more by selling #BlackandHooded apparel on the website.

They told the University of Wisconsin publication they're sort of in shock at what's happened with the hashtag.

“This is no longer about just social media,” said Allen. "We think this has the potential to change the ideology and thought patterns around black students and education.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2018 at 11:12 AM with the headline "Taking back the hoodie: How #BlackandHooded celebrates black graduates."