(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEAH BARLOW: Hello, everyone, and welcome to introduction to African American studies for the spring semester. My name is Dr. Leah Barlow.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
That video posted to TikTok last month has started a movement. Professor Barlow teaches at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, or North Carolina ANT, a historically Black college. Her brief introduction to her course, meant for her students, found its way to hundreds of thousands of viewers and prompted other Black educators to start posting as well.
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PROFESSOR TORE: Hello, HillmanTok students. I am Professor Tore (ph). Welcome to the prehistory of hip-hop.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Black fashion history.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Financial literacy.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Intro to American sign language.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: You are now enrolled in television production.
RASCOE: The result is being called HillmanTok, a kind of unofficial online HBCU. Cierra Hinton is helping organize the effort, and she joins us now. Welcome.
CIERRA HINTON: Thank you so much for having me.
RASCOE: First, I got to ask you, did you name HillmanTok? I mean, I know about Hillman, but how did the name come together?
HINTON: So yeah, HillmanTok kind of happened organically, I guess. It was a Thursday morning, and I was scrolling on TikTok. It was a couple of days after seeing Dr. Leah Barlow's initial video. And then the next video that I saw was Dr. Shannan (ph), the screenwriting 101 course. I was like, OK, so are we at a HBCU? Do we just happen to have all the Black professors? And so I took the opportunity and said, well, let me find out that I woke up at Hillman.
RASCOE: And Hillman, of course, was the college from "A Different World," you know, the spin-off...
HINTON: Yes.
RASCOE: ...From "The Cosby Show"...
HINTON: I've always wanted to go there.
RASCOE: ...The TV HBCU that influenced so many people. Is the idea to kind of create a compilation of lectures and class materials online? Or is the idea to actually create a kind of institution that offers set courses?
HINTON: So initially, yeah, it was just to create a playlist of all of the professors that were going to make videos and courses online. But then, as we continued to grow, like, it really kind of shaped into what we have today, which is, like, this well-rounded, full college experience. But initially, no, I thought - I really thought that I was just going to make, like, a compilation of courses that I was going to take on my own, but it really took a life of its own.
RASCOE: Why do you think this has struck such a chord? Why do you think it's caused such waves on TikTok?
HINTON: I think a lot of it is because of the fact that there is a lot of great college courses that are being taught for free. And I think also there is this community aspect to it, right? We celebrate our culture. We celebrate our intelligence. We celebrate our excellence. The community is leaning on each other as far as, like, gaining information, finding camaraderie within each other and then learning from one another. And I think that is why everybody is gravitating towards that. There's so much light and celebration and beauty and so much love.
RASCOE: TikTok is in legal limbo. It just returned to app stores last week, but it could possibly go away again. What are your plans if something happens to TikTok as a platform? Do you have plans for that?
HINTON: Well, HillmanTok has expanded upon to other platforms. We are now on Instagram. We are now on Facebook, and we do have a YouTube page. We know that there is such a hunger and a thirst for knowledge that we don't want there to be a closed door on it. So because of that, we have expanded our reach to other platforms.
RASCOE: That's Cierra Hinton of the HillmanTok University movement. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
HINTON: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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