Recent graduates expressed a similar sentiment, citing the diversity of Howard’s student body that drew them to the school. “You see the different shades and ranges of black people here,” says Aisha Beau Johnson, who graduated in 2011 . Johnson said Howard fosters an environment that allows for individual expression in ways black people can often feel pressured to tone down: “You can really be whoever you are and find yourself without that distraction of race.”

Over the last decade, institutions of higher education across the country have struggled with declining enrollment, historically black colleges and universities being among the hardest hit. But recently, enrollment at H.B.C.U.s has begun to rebound as the schools have become increasingly visible in the culture. In 2018, for example, Beyoncé dedicated her Coachella performance to H.B.C.U.s, and Senator Kamala Harris of California, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Howard graduate, has brought the university into the national political spotlight. Greg Carr, a professor and chair of Howard’s Afro-American Studies Department, said the current political climate is causing young black students to think in new ways about the college experience — what it means to grow intellectually in a predominantly black space. Homecoming pilgrimages at H.B.C.U.s, he added, are unique reflections of such spaces and their histories.

“Black college homecomings are informed by the same cultural logic as the church homecomings of the South,” Mr. Carr said, referring to the Great Migration of the mid-20th century: Even as millions of African-Americans left the Jim Crow South for cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, many would return to the communities they left for church homecomings in the summertime. “Put that on steroids,” he said, “and you have Howard homecoming.”