Next month, United States President Joe Biden is set to give the commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Biden is continuing the long list of presidential commencement speeches at HBCUs. Andscape’s Martenzie Johnson did a report listing the 20 separate occasions where the president spoke at an HBCU.

Joe Biden

As previously mentioned, current President Joe Biden is coming to Atlanta to give the commencement address at Morehouse. This is not, however, his first time visiting an HBCU during commencement season. He previously spoke at South Carolina State in 2021 and at Howard University just last year in 2023.

Barack Obama

The country’s 44th and first Black president, Barack Obama, has delivered addresses at HBCUs the most with six appearances. He’s given speeches at Morehouse, Howard University, Hampton University, Xavier University of Louisiana, Benedict College, and Lawson State.

“Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was,” former President Obama said to Morehouse graduates on May 19, 2013. “Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination. And moreover, you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured – and they overcame them. And if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too.”

Bill Clinton

Prior to Obama, former President George W. Bush made a single visit to Tuskegee on April 19, 2006. Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, made a habit out of speaking at HBCUs. He visited four during his presidency: Grambling State, Morgan State, Philander Smith College, and Allen University.

“I have to say a special word of appreciation to the choir, because the choir was the first choir from an historically black college to sing at the presidential inauguration – mine, in 1992,” Clinton said at Philander Smith on Sept. 27, 1997. “And I thank you very much for that.”

George H.W. Bush

Along the waterfront of Hampton University’s campus is Legacy Park, an area filled with statues of important figures. Longtime university president William R. Harvey, founder Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, and more have metal figurines that overlook the water. Following George H.W. Bush’s visit on May 12, 1991, Hampton created another statue in his image.

“We stand on the verge – if you look around the world you’ll understand this – we stand on the verge of a new age of freedom,” Bush said. “If we build upon our strengths, if we join hands as a people, we will build a nation and a future unlike any ever seen in human history.”

Bush also visited Alcorn State University on May 13, 1989.

Ronald Reagan

The former two=term Republican president gave two addresses to HBCUs at both Howard University and Tuskegee.

“The civil rights movement earned the respect and gratitude of all good and decent Americans, even some who may at first have had reservations about what was happening,” Reagan at Tuskegee on May 10, 1987. “Yet changes in the law – and the political struggle itself – brought social progress that enormously strengthened the moral foundation of the United States.”

Jimmy Carter

While Jimmy Carter only gave one speech at an HBCU campus, he did it at a special place. Carter went to Cheyney State University, the first HBCU, founded in 1837. He addressed the graduates on May 20, 1979.

“Ours, yours and mine, is a very special generation, the generation that Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. was thinking of when he expressed his dream for American with an eloquence and a moral power that never will be forgotten,” Carter said in his address.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Known primarily for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964  and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, former President Lyndon B. Johnson made a single visit to Howard University.

“Freedom is not enough,” Johnson said on June 4, 1965, mere months before signing the Voting Rights Act. “You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Herbert Hoover

On June 10, 1932, Herbert Hoover started the trend of visiting HBCUs with his commencement speech at Howard University. Franklin D. Roosevelt followed him up four years later with another speech at Howard in the fall of 1936.

“It is vital in a democracy that the public opinion upon which it rests shall be an informed and educated opinion,” Hoover said. “The Negro race comprises 10 percent of our population, and unless this 10 percent is developed proportionately with the rest of the population, it cannot pull its proper strength at the oars of our pressing problems of democracy.”

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