‘HillmanTok’: How Black Educators Built a Virtual HBCU on TikTok Amid an Uncertain Political Climate
Credit: FreshSplash / Getty Images- On Jan. 20, assistant professor Leah Barlow, Ph.D., went viral on TikTok with a welcome video for her African American Studies class.
- TikTok users quickly wanted to join, not realizing the video was intended for her real-life class at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
- Other Black educators began introducing their own TikTok courses and forming a virtual historically Black institution under the name “HillmanTok University.”
- Barlow and her peers believe people are currently turning to education as a result of a rocky political climate.
Dr. Leah Barlow wanted to delete her TikTok account after a video she posted for her distance learning course went viral.
The assistant professor of liberal studies at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University created the @aframstudies page to make the course more accessible to her students who already use social media to learn and connect.
Her first video, posted Jan. 20, welcoming students to African American Studies, quickly garnered millions of views and thousands of comments asking about the course syllabus, homework, and lecture times.
“I was just blown away,” Barlow told BestColleges. “I thought if I commented a couple of times, people would get that this wasn’t [intended for them], but they didn’t get it. So, it just kind of kept going.”
It wasn’t just hopeful students who flocked to her feed, though; college professors and education experts were inspired by Barlow’s video and began creating their own TikTok courses, many of which touch on Black history, culture, economics, and health.
The network of educators united to form the virtual and free “HillmanTok University,” named after the fictional historically Black college featured in the late 1980s/early ’90s sitcom “A Different World.”
The trend quickly spread across the app, with over 16,000 videos tagged under #HillmanTok and nearly 160,000 followers on the official HillmanTok TikTok page.
Now, HillmanTok University is extending its reach to millions more via a partnership with streaming giant Netflix, which Feb. 10 released a streaming category, “From the Syllabus of HillmanTok,” highlighting “cultural favorites” celebrating Black History Month.
Dr. Tomeika Williams-Lamar, an accounting professor at Albany State University, told BestColleges she was one of the many professors inspired by Barlow’s video to record her own and create a course teaching TikTok users basic accounting.
Her first video introducing the course — Accounting for Black Dollars — has garnered more than 162,000 views. Between her weekly live stream “lectures” and engagement on TikTok, she estimates she has around 2,000 virtual students on the app.
“It spawned overnight, and I literally watched my page go from approximately [5,000] followers to over 25,000 followers,” she said. “It just went haywire … and I think it did that for all of the professors that made videos offering classes and decided that they were going to truly promote education in this fashion.”
Designed for a Black Audience, Open to Everybody
HillmanTok offers more than 400 virtual courses, and its academic departments include business, computer technology, education, English, film, and history.
Motivated by Barlow’s idea, many of HillmanTok’s instructors are Black women, and their courses range from “The Black Dollar 101: Leveraging the Power of the Black Dollar” to “Psychology of Oppression: African American Generational Trauma 101” to “Historical Thought: Through the Lens of the Black American Experience.”
Williams-Lamar says HillmanTok confronts the historical barriers that the Black community has encountered in pursuing education, which she describes as “restricted” and “monitored.”
“There are many in my community, unfortunately, who don’t have access to quality education, and they’re at different points in their lives where they may not have the ability to attend college for multitudes of reasons,” she said. “What I’ve seen HillmanTok University do is give those who did not have said opportunities the opportunity in a very unconventional way.”
Black college students face several hurdles in higher education, including the cost of education and discrimination on campus. They are more likely to take out federal loans to attend a four-year institution and more likely to default on their loans compared to their white peers.
Since posting about her course, Williams-Lamar has received messages from individuals who are interested in learning but unable to enroll in traditional college classes. Additionally, some individuals expressed interest in attending classes despite not identifying as Black.
“We want any and everyone who is willing to learn, to learn. However, our target audience was always, and initially, just the Black community because of the disparities that we’ve had in education and what has been afforded to us,” she said.
Empowering Through Education
As the real-life historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) at which Barlow and Williams-Lamar teach began facing major impacts from the second Trump administration — including the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — HillmanTok University emerged as an organic solution.
Barlow described the phenomenon as a “pouring out” of scholarship.
“My peace comes from teaching and from pouring out,” she said. “You want to pour out this information.”
Courses offered through HillmanTok, such as “Introduction to Women Gender and Sexuality” and “LGBTQIA+ Creative Writing Recitation,” would likely be restricted if offered at a federally funded institution due to President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting federal funds used to “promote gender ideology.”
Certain HillmanTok courses focused on African American history could be censored if they were housed in an academic department dismantled by Trump’s executive order regarding DEI programs on college campuses.
Williams-Lamar sees recent education restrictions as a call to Black educators to share their knowledge.
“As Black educators, anytime we see an opportunity where we can empower, that’s what we’re going to do,” she said.
Barlow shares these sentiments, even noting the similarities between the rise of HillmanTok and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement on what was then Twitter.
Turning to TikTok to Teach
With millions of virtual students, and an even further reach with a Netflix partnership showcasing media from its courses, HillmanTok is beating the odds on two fronts: Attacks against DEI and TikTok.
Over 30 states have banned TikTok from government networks and devices, with 15 states having some type of ban specifically targeting its use on college campuses.
In early 2024, President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if the parent company, Bytedance, did not sell it by Jan. 19, 2025. On that date, the app briefly ceased operations in the U.S. but resumed around 14 hours later after Trump promised to keep TikTok online.
Some lawmakers see TikTok as a security risk, but opponents claim they want to ban the app because of content they’d deem controversial. And as anti-DEI legislation in education has come to a head, Barlow said that learning history is more important now than ever — even if it’s on TikTok instead of on a college campus.
“If ever there was a time to expose yourself to learning for learning’s sake, this is the time to do it,” Barlow said.