Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I graduated from Morehouse College in May 2001. It was a different time then; there was no social media and everybody didn’t have a cell phone. And if you did have a cell phone, you had to buy a plan that had a certain number of minutes that you had to use judiciously until T-Mobile (or was it Sprint?) dropped that “free after 9 p.m.” plan that had the streets going crazy. Again it was a different time. During that time in the Atlanta University Center (AUC), the consortium of schools that, at the time, included Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College and the Interdenominational Theological Center, there was a school paraphernalia store at the corner of Lee Street and West End Avenue called Collegiate.
Collegiate was, for the AUC, what the SNKRS app is for Nike nowadays: It was the place to get all of the latest school apparel drops. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word; there would be some new shirt that came out and word would spread through the AUC, and folks would dash to Collegiate as fast as they could, hope they hadn’t sold out AND that they had your size, and once the goods were gone, they were gone. Rereleases? I mean, sure, I guess. But once you missed that drop, you knew it was a wrap.
Word to the Morehouse “The Apology” T-shirt. As the kids say, if you know, you know.
Our bookstore, back then, barely had any apparel worthy of copping. I remember this vividly because the only item I truly remember coveting from our bookstore was this leather messenger bag that had a red “M” stitched on it and Morehouse written in white letters underneath. I still have this bag, by the way. The point of sharing this information is that I come from a time when getting the latest and greatest Morehouse apparel was a bloodsport. I imagine it was the…
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