It’s our 30^th Anniversary and we will celebrate it by proclaiming the 2000-2001 school year as our 30^th Anniversary Publishing Year. Our yearlong celebration will include a special 30^th Anniversary Section in both our First and Second Semester Super Issues, and a special 30^th Anniversary Commemorative Book that will be published in April 2001. We will launch our 30^th Anniversary $30,000 Scholarship Fund for African-American students who are majoring in elementary education, and we will launch THE BLACK COLLEGIAN’s Career Services Department that will produce our campus tours. We will also have two awards programs to recognize our supporters over the last 30 years.

We are very proud of the fact that our magazine has grown from a “shoe-string” venture that was built with “sweat equity,” persistence and psychic gratification to a publishing and Internet company on the leading edge of the 21^st century. While we will tell the story of THE BLACK COLLEGIAN in the 30^th Anniversary Commemorative Book, I simply want to say here that it was not easy for African Americans to start a publishing business in 1970. We were determined to start and survive because there was a real need for a magazine that provided Black collegians with information on career and job opportunities. Our mission is to provide Black collegians with the information, guidance and assistance needed to survive and succeed in our complex and demanding society. Our ambition was to be the resource that provided Black collegians with information on opportunities. People who had access to information on opportunities used THE BLACK COLLEGIAN to disseminate their information. While our mission gave us a great deal of psychic gratification, our growth was slow because our market was small. We, however, grew the magazine as the number of advertisers increased. We know that the best way to make a magazine good for its advertisers is to make it good for its readers. We are committed to giving Black collegians a magazine that is packed with good and valuable information on opportunities because for so many years African Americans were denied access to information on opportunities. We did not know where the opportunities were, and we did not know how to apply for them. Today is different. Today, the world is full of opportunities and we will help you find them and apply for them.

As I think back over the past 30 hard years, I take a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that we did not quit when things got tough. When we used that “shotgun” house as an office with no air conditioning and an often leaky roof; a hollow-core door on two, two-drawer file cabinets for a desk, we did not quit. We believed if we kept working hard, things would get better. They did for us and they will for you. I want to tell you that things will get hard this year for you, especially if you have high aspirations. So expect tough times, but believe that you can work through them. You will. We did and we are not done. We have high aspirations and we expect tough times in the future, but it will be so exciting as we expand our Internet and publishing business. On the Internet, we can expand our reach beyond the 800 plus campuses we serve. We will provide you with more valuable information on opportunities, and we will provide this at Internet speed—you don’t have to wait for the next issue.

Things got better for us because we made them better.  Things will get better for you and all of us when we make them better.  So I encourage Black collegians to get involved on your campus and in your community. I encourage you to change your voter registration to the district where your university is located, and become a block vote that your local politicians will have to deal with.  You can gain substantial political power and significantly improve your condition by block voting.

In closing, I want to encourage you to stay in touch with us during our 30^th Anniversary Publishing Year through www.black-collegian.com. By the time you read this, we will have transformed MINORITIES’ JOB BANK into www.IMDiversity.com, which broadens the audience and scope of this career site. I encourage you to use both Web sites in your job search. I also encourage you to use e-mail to apply to the employers that interest you, and tell them where you read about them. When you e-mail them, you tell them that you are not a part of the Digital Divide.  You have it, you are on it, and you use it.

I want to thank all of our friends and extended families who have supported us over the years; the career services directors, and their staff who have distributed THE BLACK COLLEGIAN to millions of students; to the writers who have shared their knowledge and advice; to the advertisers who have encouraged Black collegians to apply for their job opportunities; to our employees who have worked so tirelessly to produce our wonderful opportunity-filled magazine; to my family members who have given me so much love and support—my grandsons: Chancellor, Coleman, Preston III; my daughter-in-law, Trina; my sons: Preston Jr. and Scott; and my wife, Rosa, and most importantly, I want to thank God for blessing us with this wonderful opportunity.

Stay tuned! This is the beginning of another great year for a 30-year-old new company.

Preston J. Edwards, Sr.
CEO and Publisher