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Since the beginning of 2022, more than a dozen Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been the target of anonymous bomb threats. The latest recipient is Spelman College. The institution received a bomb threat Tuesday morning.

This marked the all-women school’s third threat this year. All classes were cancelled and a four hour campus-wide lockdown ensued.

To address the ongoing trend of HBCUs receiving bomb threats, the Southern Poverty Law Center hosted a discussion with several HBCU leaders. At least 14 schools, including Spelman received bomb threats last week.

“We come to HBCUs, specifically Spelman, to feel safe,” Sanzia Pearman, a sophomore at Spelman College told CNN. “It’s horrible the fact that I come here to feel safe and be within a community of my own and now I’m being attacked for that.”

The threat was received Tuesday at 9:53 a.m., according to school officials. There was no information about the time or location of detonation. The Atlanta Police Department then conducted an intense sweep of the campus.

“We appreciate the active involvement of our local and federal officials,” said Mary Schmidt Campbell, president of Spelman College, in a statement Tuesday. “We continue to count on them to work with us to add additional protective resources and to step up their investigations into these threats. The students, faculty and staff of Spelman deserve the ability to conduct the college’s mission with calm, confidence, and security.”

The recent bomb threats have sparked heightened levels of anxiety at HBCU campuses around the country.

“I’m uneasy,” 22-year-old Calvert White, a student at Jackson State University in Mississippi told CNN. “HBCUs have a long history of physical threats just because of our existence. I think that the threats aren’t individual or coincidental — that it’s a clear attack on Black students who choose to go to Black schools.”

The first day of Black History Month was met with threats to 16 HBCUs.

The FBI is currently investigating these recent threats and have identified suspects though no arrests have been made.

According to a statement from the FBI, the investigation “is of the highest priority for the Bureau and involves more than 20 FBI field offices across the country. Although at this time no explosive devices have been found at any of the locations, the FBI takes all threats with the utmost seriousness and we are committed to thoroughly and aggressively investigating these threats.”

“We know that we were targeted as a cluster, right, because we’re historically Black institutions,” said Anne McCall, provost of Xavier University. “We also know our neighbors — Jewish neighbors, Muslim neighbors — around the country are targeted by white supremacists as well. And so, in this teaching, that needs to occur around our country…we need to see that this is part of a large, white supremacist project that must not be mistaken for anything other than that.”

Despite the uneasiness felt across Black institutions nationwide, HBCU leaders have highlighted the determination and resilience of students.

“They are disappointed, they are traumatized,” Felecia Nave, president of Alcorn State University said. “But they are resolved to continue to move forward and to make it known that we won’t be threatened.”

“It’s a very clear attack on our race,” Pearman said. 

But HBCUs were created during times of adversity for Black students, she added, “so this is nothing new to us.” 

“This is just another bump in the road, and we will continue to prevail,” she said.