Decades before he was dean of the Southern University College of Business, Donald Andrews picked cotton in northeastern Louisiana and took lessons with the retired schoolteacher next door.
“She just painted an entire different picture for me,” Andrews said. “At that time, we were highly segregated. I don’t think people in the town I grew up in knew that the South lost the Civil War.”
When he visited Grambling, Louisiana, for the first time, home to the historically Black Grambling State University, it was with the teacher’s daughter and grandson. Seeing a Black mayor, a Black police officer — all the opportunities he had no idea about — Andrews knew that he had to go to college, he said…