There’s just something about HBCU Homecoming that just hits different. Whether it’s your first time stepping onto the yard since graduation or you’re a regular at every Homecoming tailgate, HBCU pride is undeniable. It’s a vibrant celebration that unites the legacy of excellence and tradition with the energy and resilience of Black culture.
The experience goes beyond a typical college reunion; HBCU Homecoming is a family reunion, a fashion show, a cultural festival, and a week-long turn-up that embodies what it means to be unapologetically Black and educated. For HBCU alumni, the journey back to the yard each year is rooted in a love and pride that’s hard to put into words but impossible to deny.
From statement pieces to tech must-haves, every item represents the intersection of Black pride and HBCU love, ensuring that you show up to the yard in style and with intention. So whether you’re repping your alma mater for the first time since graduation or looking for fresh pieces to express your HBCU pride, these essentials will have you standing out, because, at HBCU Homecoming, it’s not just about showing up—it’s about showing out.
Thread Goals
diarrablu Jant Pants in Alia Noir
High-waisted, wide-legged, and ready to shut down the yard, the Jant Pants by diarrablu bring a whole new meaning to campus chic. Handcrafted in Dakar, Senegal, these free-flowing jacquard pants are perfect for stepping onto the yard with style and ease—making them a must-have for any HBCU alum’s closet.
Silver & Riley Convertible Executive Leather Bag Classic Size in Olive
This all-in-one luxury bag isn’t a bestseller for nothing. The Silver & Riley essential is made of Italian calfskin leather and thoughtfully designed, as it can be worn in four different ways: a shoulder bag, crossbody, a top handle, and a backpack. Chic and elegant, the Convertible Executive Leather bag is “the bag that every woman needs in her collection.”
Renowned Women's Intuition Cotton Graphic T-Shirt
Renowned
Renowned’s Women’s Intuition Cotton Graphic T-shirt features a bold graphic print inspired by the power and essence of women’s intuition. With its striking design, this all-cotton tee is a vibrant thing, making it a statement piece that celebrates feminine energy.
Mifland Million M Mesh Crop Shirt
Talk about bold, the Million M Mesh Crop Shirt combines edgy style with comfort, featuring Mifland’s signature print on a semi-see-through mesh fabric. Show up and show out in sophisticated flair.
HBCU Love FUBU
Melanin Is Life Melanated & Educated - I Love My HBCU Hoodie
Show off your HBCU love with this piece that represents everything you gained from your alma mater: a top-tier education, a community that lifts you up, and a deep sense of esteem for yourself and your culture. Wear it loud and proud, because being melanated and educated isn’t just a flex—it’s a legacy.
HBCU Culture Spelmanite Sweatshirt in Navy
Spelmanites, rep your Spelman pride with this unisex crewneck sweatshirt, designed for ultimate comfort and a relaxed fit. Made from a cozy cotton/polyester blend, this classic sweatshirt is as durable as it is stylish—making it an ideal piece for any Spelmanite showing love for their alma mater.
HBCU Culture Howard Is The Culture T-Shirt
Rock the ultimate flex by showcasing your Howard U love with HBCU Culture’s Howard Is The Culture t-shirt. This unisex tee offers a comfortable, relaxed fit that’s perfect for celebrating your HBCU spirit without sacrificing style or comfort.
DungeonForward FAMU - Strike Bucket - Reversible
DungeonForward’s Strike Bucket Hat brings versatility and style to the FAMU Crown collection with its reversible design, giving you two looks in one. Featuring a sleek black snakeskin-embossed brim lining and a bold outline Rattler emblem, this hat is all about repping your Rattler pride in style.
DungeonForward Savannah State University - HBCU Hat - TheYard
The Savannah State University HBCU Hat by DungeonForward is more than just a hat—it’s a symbol of Tiger pride and a nod to the culture. Perfect for gamedays, tailgates, or just showing off your HBCU love, this hat lets you carry a piece of the yard wherever you go.
Tech the Halls
Anker iPhone 16 Portable Charger, Nano Power Bank
Stay charged up with the Anker Nano Power Bank, which features dual USB-C ports, a foldable connector, and a compact design, making it perfect for those HBCU tailgates and late-night parties you pull up to.
Drip Check
Wisdom Frame 14 Square Sunglasses
Elevate your look with these angular square-frame sunglasses by Wisdom, bringing an ultramodern edge to any outfit. The sleek design makes them perfect for blocking out the haters while you stunt on the yard.
Coco and Breezy Eyewear Fortune in Gray Turquoise
The Fortune Glasses in Grey Turquoise is a bold statement piece to any Homecoming weekend ‘fit that “embody our fearless and outspoken DNA.” With their color and edgy design, these frames by Coco and Breezy are perfect for anyone looking to stand out and express their unapologetic confidence.
Howard U Lapel Pin
Rep your Bison pride wherever you go with this Howard U Lapel Pin from Pretty AmbVision. Whether adding it to your jacket, shirt, or bag, this pin is the perfect way to showcase your love for your alma mater while rocking your HBCU love with honor and distinction.
Mifland Standard Rucksack Mini
The Standard Rucksack is designed to evolve like that HBCU pride—getting richer, bolder, and better with time. Durable, stylish, and built to last, this Rucksack by Mifland is a timeless piece equipped with versatile carrying options and fully adjustable back straps for ultimate comfort.
Stay Fresh, Stay Blessed
Slip Pure Silk Sleep Mask in Pink
Keeping it cute starts with beauty sleep. This luxurious silk mask is an essential for a reason. If protecting your skin and waking up refreshed is your priority, look no further than this Homecoming essential.
Liquid I.V.® Hydration Multiplier Lemon Lime - Hydration Powder Packets
Stay hydrated and energized throughout Homecoming weekend with this Liquid I.V.® Hydration Multiplier in Lemon Lime. Just add a packet to your water bottle, and bless your body with 2-3 times more hydration than water with every packet. Because staying hydrated is the key to popping up and showing out all weekend long!
Loop Experience Plus Earplugs High Fidelity Hearing Protection
Designed for your hearing protection, these sleek earplugs reduce noise without compromising sound quality—perfect for enjoying the band’s halftime show, late-night parties, and DJ sets. Whether you’re front row at the step show or hitting the yard, your ears deserve to be protected in style!
Black Girl Magic Glass Cup
Sip in style and celebrate your melanin with the Black Girl Magic Glass Cup. Perfect for morning coffee, your favorite iced drink, or showing off your HBCU pride on the yard—this cup is all about keeping it cute while radiating your endless supply of Black Girl Magic.
Glow Up & Show Out
Black Girl Sunscreen SPF 30
What Homecoming weekend can be complete without an assist from this beauty find? Formulated to blend seamlessly into melanin-rich skin (no white-cast), protect your glow while you turn up with the Black Girl Sunscreen SPF 30.
Sienna Naturals Issa Rae's Wash Day Ritual Set
Issa Rae’s Wash Day Ritual Set from Sienna Naturals includes the H.A.PI. Shampoo, the Plant Power Repair Mask, Dew Magic, and Lock and Seal to get your crown right. Whether you’re repping your coils or rocking a new color on the yard, these products restore and nourish your strands, keeping your hair healthy, strong, and Homecoming-ready!
54 Thrones Ivorian Cocoa + Ghanaian Coconut Beauty Butter
Stay glowing from the tailgate to the after-party with the 54 Thrones Ivorian Cocoa + Ghanaian Coconut Beauty Butter. Infused with African-sourced ingredients, this rich, multi-purpose butter is the answer to keeping your skin soft and radiant through all the festivities all Homecoming long.
Saie Glossybounce Hydrating Lip Oil
Keep your lips looking luscious and nourished with the Saie Glossybounce Hydrating Lip Oil. Perfect for adding an extra pop to your pout before hitting the yard or freshening up between events, this lip oil is a beauty essential for staying camera-ready all weekend.
Join us in celebrating HBCU excellence! Check out our Best In Class hub for inspiring stories, empowering resources, and everything you need to embrace the HBCU experience.
Featured image by Visual Vic/Getty Images
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A Goddard College graduate, who earned an MFA from Pratt Institute and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Marymount Manhattan College, Mahogany offers unapologetic realness with a side of grace and empowerment. "I started touring locally. I started creating chat books so that those poems will go in the hands of the people who were sitting in the rooms," she shared.
"And then I started facilitating poetry workshops, so I used my chat books as curriculum. And that, in turn, allowed me to further invest in my art and show the community and people who were hiring me that it wasn't just a one-off, that it's not just, you know, a fly by night—that I am invested in this art as much as I am invested in your community, in your children's learning, in our growth."
Mahogany has a special way of moving audiences, and her superpower sparks shifts in perspective, post-performance introspection, and strengthening of community bonds, especially among Black women. (One can undeniably recognize her gift for arousal of the spirit and mind merely from her listening to her insights from the other side of a Google Hangout call. I can only imagine the soul-stirring, top-tier sensory encounter when watching her perform in person.)
In this chat with xoNecole, Mahogany reflects on sustaining a creative career, the aftermath of writing a banned book, and using poetry for both healing, community-building, and activism.
Anthony Artis
xoNecole: What are three key things that have laid the foundation for a sustainable creative career for you?
Mahogany L Browne: What has helped me is that I'm willing to go in being an expert at knowing poetry and knowing the way in which art can change the landscape of our lives, not just as a poet, but also as a poetry facilitator. How you move through classes, those things are mastered, right? So when I go into another space that's maybe tech-heavy, I don't mind learning and being, you know, a student of the wonder of how we can make this magic, work together.
Two, you’ve got to know how to pivot. Sometimes we say, ‘Alright, this is what my life is going to be. I'm going to be a New York Times best-selling author. I'm going to, you know, have an album that's Grammy-nominated. And then, say you get dropped from your record label. That doesn't mean you can't make an album anymore. You can also still create an album that can be submitted to the Grammys. So, what does a pivot look like as an artist who doesn't have an institution behind them? Pivot being a student of the wonder.
Relationships also really help. How do I serve the community? And in turn, that tells me how the community can show up. For me, I have long-standing ties with a community that will outlast my one life. So, what does it mean to create space where these relationships can develop, can be nurtured, can be rooted, can be cultivated? Creating space—it happens through relationships.
xoN: With today’s economic challenges, what does your current creative process look like, and what are you working on?
MB: I’m always thinking five years ahead. I just reviewed the pages for two children’s books and recently released a YA novel. I’m drafting an adult fiction manuscript now.
Anything I create is founded with the root of poetry, but it can exist in captions. It can exist in commercials. It can exist as a musical. So that's where I’m at now.
xoN: You started performing "Black Girl Magic" in 2013, had an acclaimed performance of it via PBS and the work went on to viral success shortly after. Talk more about the inspiration. And what do you think about the continued relevance more than a decade later?
MB: I wrote it as a rally cry for the mothers who had been keeping themselves truly in harm's way by, you know, being a part of the community right after the death of their child or their loved one. They are usually mothers of victims of police brutality—and just seeing how they showed up in these community spaces, they are devout to the cause but obviously still grieving.
"I wanted this poem to be just a space of reclamation, of joy and of you, of your light, of your shine, of your brilliance, in any which way in which you fashion. Every room you enter is the room you deserve to be in. What does it mean to have a poem like that that exists?"
And the first time I did the poem, the Weeping that occurred, right? It was like this blood-letting of sorts. The next time I performed it, I'm moved to tears because I'm seeing how it's affecting other women who have just been waiting to hear, ‘You belong. You deserve. You are good. We see you. Thank you, despite everything that they said to make you regret being born in this beautiful brown, dark-skinned, light-skinned, but Black body.’
Black women are the backbone—period. Point blank. And so, that that poem became a necessity, not just to the fortitude of Black women in the community, but like you know, in service of healing the Black women.
xoN: One of your books was banned at a school in Boston, and it was later reinstated due to parental and activist support. What was that experience like?
MB: Well, I think it happened because they were racist. That's it. Point blank. The reversal of it was empowering, right? I realized, oh, I thought we just had to sit here and be on a banned book list. But no, parents are actually the leaders of this charge.
So to see that, the parents said, ‘Nah, we're not gonna let you take this book out of my baby’s school just because it's a Black kid on the front saying, ‘Woke’ and they're talking about being a global citizen. They're talking about accountability. They're talking about accessibility. They're talking about allyship, and you don't want them to have compassion or empathy or have even an understanding, right? So no, we rebuke that, and we want this book here anyway.’ To see that happen in that way. I was, like, reaffirmed. Absolutely.
xoN: You recently organized the Black Girl Magic Ball at the Lincoln Center in New York. Honorees included author and entrepreneur Rachel Cargle and National Black Theater CEO Sade Lythcott. What impact did it have and what expanded legacy do you hope to leave with your creative works?
MB: I was really interested in not celebrating just the book, but celebrating the community that made the book possible. And so I gave out five awards to women doing that thing, like, what does it mean to be a Black girl in this world?
I just thought it was gonna be an amazing time. Everybody's gonna dress up—we're gonna celebrate each other. And boom, I then realized that it responded to like a gaping hole. There was a missing thing for Black girls of all walks of life, all ages, right?
"It's very intergenerational. That was intentional to come together and celebrate just being us."
You have all these instances where just being you is either the butt of a joke or it's diminished and not worthy of a specific title in these larger institutions. So what does it mean to just to be loved up on and celebrated?
It felt like a self-care project at first. You know, for the first couple of years, folks were coming and they were getting that sisterhood. They were getting that tribe work that they were missing in their everyday lives.
I love the Black Girl Magic Ball because we got us. If I go out with a bang, they'll remember that Mahogany worked her a** off to make sure all the Black girls everywhere knew that she was the light. We are the blueprint.
For more information on Mahogany L. Browne, her work, and her future projects, visit her website or follow her on IG @mobrowne.
Featured image by Anthony Artis
Anyway, all of the talk about vampires — you know, due to the film — did cause me to wonder something that might seem rather random, yet that’s oftentimes how my mind works: Do vampires give each other hickeys? As I Googled for an answer, besides a book that has a title close to that name, I did notice an ABC feature from when the vampire Twilight film series was all the rage several years back. It was inquiring if teens were suddenly biting each other (back then) because of the movie(s).
The sexologist who was interviewed came to the conclusion that since biting is “an extension of the hickey” and hickeys are (typically) considered to be passionate, that’s why teens were interested in doing it. As far as what vampires do with each other? I couldn’t find a definitive answer.
I dunno. With hickeys also being called “love bites” and “suck marks” and with folks oftentimes describing vampire-themed movies as sexy, I would think that they could. Either way, what we know for sure is that those of us in the real world do it — and so, in honor/acknowledgement of that, I figured that now would be a perfect time to share some facts about hickeys. Ready?
1. Humans Are Copying Animals When They Give Hickeys
Aight, so what exactly is the origin story of hickeys? It would seem that it came from the literature of authors who wrote about what animals like lions and wolves do whenever they are showing affection towards one another. Apparently, humans saw this and eventually began to follow suit.
Hey, that doesn’t sound so crazy to me, considering doggy style continues to be a fan favorite among our species, and…have you ever seen two cats have sex before? I have, more than once, and the male cat is typically biting on the female one, in her neck region, during the act. So, when I really stop to think about all of this, it definitely tracks.
2. Hickeys Are Oftentimes a Low-Key Power Play
Ah, perfect. If you click here, you will actually see a picture of two cats having sex, and — like I just said, the male cat is biting the female cat. One reason why is because male cat penises have barbs on them which can make the entry or exit of intercourse literally painful for the female. And so, the male cat holds her in place by biting her, so that she doesn’t run away. And yes, along these same lines, some believe that hickeys can serve as their own power dynamic shift, even among humans — especially based on where a person decides to put one. I guess it would be like “peeing on your territory” in a way — hmph, which is something else that animals tend to do.
anon GIF - Find & Share on GIPHYGiphy3. Hickeys Are Nothing More than a Bruise
Okay, so what actually causes a hickey to happen? Well, when someone sucks and gently bites on your skin, it can break some of the surface blood vessels that are underneath your skin to break. When that happens, it results in a bruise. If someone does this to you for about a half a minute, you should notice a hickey emerge in a matter of minutes and, depending on how “good” of a job they did, a hickey can stick around for as much as a couple of weeks.
4. “Temperature Play” Speeds Up the Healing Process of Hickeys
Again, depending on how “good” of a job someone did at giving you a hickey, it could last between two days and two weeks. If you want yours to fade faster, because, again, hickeys are a bruise, it’s a good idea to bring some temperature play into action. What I mean by that is, start off by putting an ice pack on your hickey for up to 10 minutes, twice a day, for the first two days.
Then, after 48 hours, apply a warm compress for 10 minutes a few times a day. You might also want to apply a bit of peppermint oil to your hickey and gently massage that area as well; that will help to bring more blood flow to the spot, so that your skin can heal faster.
5. If You Take Blood Thinners, Hickeys Will Last Longer
If you’re someone who takes blood thinners, that will keep hickeys aren’t for a longer period of time. That’s because blood thinners are specifically designed to slow down the blood clotting process that’s in your body. So, if you’re big on hickeys and you even take aspirin on a fairly regular basis, you’re gonna have to accept that the “hickey healing hacks” may not actually work for you (at least not as quickly or effectively).
6. Certain “Natural Things” Can Make Them Last Longer Too
Speaking of blood thinners, even if you aren’t on any meds, did you know that certain foods provide blood-thinning effects as well? Some of those include ginger, garlic, aloe, turmeric, and cayenne pepper, and even supplements including vitamin E and melatonin. Just something to keep in mind. (By the way, vitamin C and the bromelain in pineapples can help to heal hickeys as far as supplements and foods go).
7. No, Hickeys Will Not Give You Cancer
It actually wasn’t until I was doing research for this article that I even heard the myth that hickeys can give you cancer. What in the world? Yeah, if you heard that somewhere before, pay that tale no mind, because science absolutely says otherwise. For the most part, hickeys are relatively harmless.
8. They Can Give You an Infection, Though
And why did I just say, “for the most part”? Yeah, you caught that, huh? Well, there is an extreme instance where a woman had a stroke due to a hickey because it happened on top of a major artery — that’s hella rare, though. What is more common is oral herpes transmitted through hickeys.
Not to mention the fact that a hickey is usually a bruise more than a wound; however, if your skin does end up being broken or you’re giving a hickey and blood is somehow transmitted…well, I’m sure you could see how this could be potentially problematic. Bottom line, get — and stay getting — tested. Just to be on the safe side. Hickeys or not.
9. A Dream About Getting a Hickey Is Actually a Warning
Remember how I said earlier that sometimes the person who is giving the hickey is doing so as an act of power? Well, along those same lines, if you happen to dream that someone is giving you a love bite, keep in mind that it probably isn’t about anything sexual; usually, it means that you are either in a toxic or stressful situation and you’re trying to figure out if you should approach it with logic or emotion. The more you know.
10. Sometimes Pain Creates Pleasure
Someone who enjoys being tortured or humiliated during sex, they fall into a category that is known as sexual masochism — and no, that is not what I am referring to here. What I am speaking about is the fact that, because pain and pleasure sensations are housed in the same part of the brain, when mild pain is felt, that could be why it arouses you — and that could be why you may enjoy receiving hickeys (I mean, if you actually do). They both have been proven to create a dopamine and opioid surge, which can intensify your sexual responses and reactions.
____
Hickeys do tend to create a very polarizing response: folks either adore them or loathe them. Either way, now you know what they’re all about, so if you’re on the “A” team, share it with those who are also in your club.
It could make them appreciate hickeys — love bites, suck marks — that much more, chile.
Dig in. #wink
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Featured image by Giphy