Southern Diva

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are a unique group of higher education institutions, mainly in the South, that were founded during a time Black students were not allowed to attend predominately white institutions (PWIs) solely due to their skin color. Please note, this does not mean these schools were exclusively Black, because they never were. Many other races and ethnicities have and still do attend HBCUs. They provided a safe space to receive a quality education. There are now 107 HBCUs today.

New traditions were born from these institutions and one is that of the school queen. School queens are not a new concept, but HBCU queens and the traditions surrounding them, are rarely known outside of the world of HBCUs. Mississippi native, Camille, @CamilleViviana on Tik Tok, is changing that one video at a time.

Camille narrates her video with such enthusiasm and doesn’t shy away from affirming and showering each of the ladies with compliments.

One of her followers asked if the queens ran campaigns, and was their voting involved and pageants. Yes, yes, and yes. The basic criteria is usually that the candidates have to be in good standing with their college or university, have the minimal required GPA, are usually expected to be involved in their campus and surrounding communities, and have a service mission they will implement if elected. Campaign season is a special time at HBCUs and I remember at my alma mater, posters were all over campus, campaign teams worked diligently on behalf of their perspective queen candidates, and the student body voted on who they wanted after hearing from the candidates. There were campus events, a town hall were each king and queen candidate got to speak and receive questions from the student body. Then we voted. Those votes were factored into the votes along with the judges votes at the pageant at the end of the campaign period. Then we got our queen! She would be crown at a coronation the following fall and her reign would kick off then. I’m sure every school is different, but much more goes into becoming a campus queen that build a pretty dress.