How LeBron James ignored legacy of Memphis HBCU LeMoyne-Owen | Opinion

“[The Grizzlies] have to move. Just go over to Nashville. You got Vanderbilt over there...”

That’s what LeBron said.

Vanderbilt is a beautiful institution. From one college president to another, Daniel Diermeier is leading one of the most prestigious universities in Tennessee. I have no quarrel with that.

But when NBA icon LeBron James – a man with one of the most powerful platforms on earth – names Vanderbilt as Nashville’s academic anchor and keeps moving, he does something he may not have intended: He erases Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

That erasure is not new. It is not accidental. And it is not without consequence.

Nashville is home to four HBCUs: Fisk University, Tennessee State University, American Baptist College and Meharry Medical College.

And here in Memphis, LeMoyne-Owen College has stood as a beacon of Black excellence and community resilience for more than 160 years. Our graduates have led courtrooms, classrooms, operating rooms and city halls.

A Memphis without the Grizzlies is like a Memphis without LeMoyne-Owen: diminished.

The investiture of Christopher B. Davis, the 14th president of Lemoyne-Owen College, took place on Friday, April 18, 2025, at the Orpheum in Memphis, Tenn.

The continued impact of LeMoyne-Owen College

I want to speak plainly for a moment, because at LeMoyne-Owen, we know, perhaps better than most, what it feels like to be underestimated.

LeMoyne-Owen has had its share of hard headlines and harder years. Nestled in a neighborhood the broader world too often writes off, we have had to fight for our story to be told accurately – and fight even harder for the resources to keep telling it. But we are still here. And we are not just surviving; we are building.

Opinion: LeBron James, the Grizzlies and why his Memphis remarks hurt

Since I took the helm, here is what this community has done together:

• Enrollment is up 15 percent**,** and it is still climbing. We are expecting one of our largest incoming classes in the Fall of 2026.

• We refreshed our Department of Humanities and Fine Arts, because we believe the life of the mind and the power of creative expression are not luxuries. They are necessities.

• We launched a religious studies curriculum under the visionary leadership of Dr. Peter Gathje and Dr. Earle Fisher, two scholars who understand that the Spirit and the struggle have never been separate.

• We established the Lowery Communications Center, where our students learn podcasting, multimedia production and how to own their own narrative in a world that will try to write it for them.

• Our cybersecurity program, one of our best-kept secrets, is competitive with any peer institution in this region. Our students are not behind. They are ready.

We have done all of this with limited resources, in a complicated moment, because that is what Black institutions have always done. We make a way out of no way. That is not a metaphor. That is our history.

And yet, even as we build, forces are working against us.

LeMoyne-Owen’s marching band performs during the Southern Heritage Classic Parade through the Orange Mound neighborhood in Memphis, Tenn., on September 27, 2025. The parade takes place prior to the Southern Heritage Classic football game between Alcorn State and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

The fight for HBCU funding

Title III funding, the financial backbone that has allowed HBCUs to maintain educational quality and institutional stability for decades, faces a 14.4% cut in the proposed 2026 federal budget. Research grants that our institutions spent years earning are being canceled under the banner of anti-DEI policy, as if the pursuit of equity were something to be ashamed of.

Florida A&M lost a biomedical research grant it had held for 33 years. Morehouse School of Medicine lost funding for maternal health research, research that was saving Black women’s lives.

Opinion: How West Tennessee can support growth and protect its water

These are not line items. They are lifelines. And when they are cut, it is not bureaucracy that suffers. It is our students. It is our communities. It is our children.

So when a man with LeBron’s platform gestures toward Nashville and points to Vanderbilt, and only Vanderbilt, it feeds a narrative that says Black institutions don’t count. That prestige, by default, belongs somewhere else.

LeBron James' open invitation

Let me be clear about what Memphis is.

Memphis is a city whose identity was shaped by the people who built it, many of whom came from LOC. HBCUs have been part of that story since Reconstruction. We are not the backdrop. We are the foundation.

The Grizzlies belong here because this city is more than a market; it’s a community.

LeBron, I am not writing this to shame you. I am writing it because I believe your commitment to Black communities is real. I have watched you build a school. I have watched you use your name to lift people up. That is not performance. That is character.

So here is my invitation, and I mean it sincerely: Come to Memphis. Walk this campus. Let me show you what 160 years of resilience looks like when it puts on its Sunday best. Sit with our students. Break bread with our faculty. Hear from our alumni about what this education meant to them and what it cost to get here.

And if you happen to be looking for something to do on a Friday night, our Annual Presidential Gala is on April 17th at the Renasant Convention Center. It is our capital campaign event, a celebration of what LeMoyne-Owen has been and a declaration of what we are becoming. You would be more than welcome at our table.

Memphis is more than a market. LeMoyne-Owen College is more than a footnote.

It is time the world saw us that way.

Dr. Christopher B. Davis

Dr. Christopher B. Davis is the 14th president of LeMoyne‑Owen College.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: In pushing for Grizzlies move, LeBron ignores Memphis HBCU | Opinion