A Portland footwear designer said Tuesday he will reopen Michigan’s only historically black college and university next year in Detroit with a design focus.
D’Wayne Edwards, the founder of the PENSOLE Design Academy in Portland, Oregon, is behind the draft proposal for state authorization to recognize the former Lewis College of Business as Michigan’s only HBCU.
If approved by the state, it would give Detroit—one of the largest Black cities in the United States, according to 2020 Census data—what Edwards called the “first design-focused HBCU.”
Lewis College of Business closed in 2013. The reopened school would be known as the PENSOLE Lewis College of Business and Design. It would be the nation’s only HBCU to reopen after closing, Edwards said.
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