Stained Glass at Howard University

Written by Regina Blackburn

Howard University

A native of Washington, D.C., and current resident of Maryland, Regina Blackburn attended Howard University, receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Communications. After graduation, she worked in the television broadcasting industry for 40 years. Regina has also self published EIGHT books that are currently being sold on Amazon, along with garnering six Billboard Magazine Awards for her original music compositions. She is a member of the BMI performance rights organization and a breast cancer survivor.
Read more about Regina here.

Hosted and produced by Peter Griffith; contributing producer Rob Wallace

In this episode, we meet Regina Blackburn, a talented 18-year-old whose head was full of both idealistic and naive views of the world. She walked on the campus of Howard University in 1977, completely unaware that both those views would soon be shattered.

Don’t miss this unique event – a sexual assault story that is as uncomfortable as it is inspirational. This is the tremendous arc of a young woman who refused to live in fear. Hear her important lesson she learned at college, not found in textbooks or lectures – Silence doesn’t protect us. Sharing does.

Published February 18, 2026

[ appropriate music ]

HOST: 

Today on campus, leaves of gold are falling down in Washington DC. It’s fall, in the year 1977.

The freshmen class at Howard University are looking for their dorm rooms and finding new friends. Two groundbreaking TV shows earlier that year had everyone on the campus buzzing.

When Roots aired on TV, the landmark miniseries, not the band on The Tonight Show, it was seen by over 100 million people. It centered on American slavery and the show broke many barriers that were considered too taboo to talk about. Including it being the first on television to depict sexual assault as a brutal tool that was used to break the identity of enslaved people, particularly women.

Another show, All in the Family, was already a well-established sitcom that pushed the boundaries of formerly unspeakable topics. But that year, Normal Lear wrote and produced Edith’s 50th Birthday, in which the beloved Edith Bunker was the victim of an attempted rape. It was the first show of its kind on television to ever address the issue.

1977 was a year people started talking more openly and publicly about sexual assaults and rape, and how those events impacted the victims. And it was that same year a young, idealistic freshman kicked her way through the first falling leaves of Howard University in Washington DC.

In today’s episode, we meet Regina Blackburn, a talented 18-year-old whose head was full of both idealistic and naive views of the world. She walked on campus in 1977, completely unaware that both those views would soon be shattered.

Stay tuned for a unique event, but unfortunately one not so uncommon – a story that is as uncomfortable as it is inspirational. This is the tremendous arc of young woman who refused to live in fear. Hear her important lesson she learned at college not found in textbooks or lectures – Silence doesn’t protect us. Sharing does.

[ Marching band music ]

This is Once, In College. I’m Pete Griffith.

Today’s episode was written and will be narrated by Regina Blackburn. When we met her, Regina seemed to downplay the fact she had worked in the television industry at the NBC News Bureau in Washington, D.C. for forty years, helping present the last four decades of our Nation’s history to America. It took us a while to try and wrap our heads around the volume of that work and I’m still not sure we really have. With eight self-published novels and six Billboard Magazine Awards for her original music compositions, we got to know her as a person who could move our hearts without doing anything but simply telling us the unvarnished truth. So today, we are getting out of the way and letting Regina narrate it herself. She’s found the strength to claim her narrative of the events.

[ Bells from campus tower ]

Class is about to begin. Here’s Regina Blackburn’s true story, in her own voice, from her time once, in college.

[ appropriate music ]

NARRATOR: 

The aging process, in all its grace and complexity, is truly fascinating. There’s a quiet shift that happens over time where the things you once vowed to keep tucked away suddenly begin to stir in your spirit. You find yourself wanting to share, not for sympathy, but because your story might be the very thing someone else needs to hear. I’m retired, in my sixties, and have lived a full and meaningful life. But there’s a memory of over forty years old that I’ve buried that I now find myself wanting to share. My story just might be the very thing someone else needs to hear. The older I become, the more I understand that some of my lived experiences could, in fact, help someone who might be facing a similar situation. Let’s go back to the Fall of 1977. 

I was a freshman attending the illustrious and historic Howard University in Washington, D.C.  There were very few members of my family that attended college, and less than that who were graduates, so making this step toward higher learning was a major milestone.  This was especially true for my Great-Grandmother, who’d made so many sacrifices of herself to ensure that my sister and I were educated, became good citizens, and remained good people. I graduated Salutatorian of my high school class and much was expected of me at HU. I remember being a senior in high school and seeing college brochures of young people sitting under the trees, eating fruit and the like, and someone even strumming a guitar, serenading the small crowd. I could only imagine that folk music was playing and everyone was happy and smiling and enjoying the new title of “college student”. I couldn’t wait to go to HU and be in a group like that, although the music would probably be R&B or Soul. Whatever it was, sign me up. The studying part would just be an extension of high school, I thought, and I could handle that with few problems, but the best part? The best part of being a college student would be not having anyone telling you to go to school or go to class. Freedom!!!  It was YOUR choices for YOUR future.

This particular day, I was sitting alone under a tree and, yes, eating an apple. One day a week, I had a long break between classes, so I used that time to get an early start on homework and map out what I needed to do for a few other classes. It made for good time management. The later it became on campus, the quieter it became, with sparse foot traffic. So there I sat absorbed in my books, minding my own business, when I was interrupted. A tall guy, that I recognized vaguely from around campus, approached me running and grabbed my backpack. Interesting enough, his name was Howard and I believe he was on the swim team. I shouted at him to bring my bag back, but he just kept running, increasing the distance between us. I quickly gathered my things and began chase, naively thinking it was some kind of dumb college prank. I didn’t realize that I was being lured. 

The School of Religion was nearby. He ran up those many steps, taking them two and three at a time, and disappeared beyond the door. I had closed ground on my pursuit of him, but when I entered the building, he was already out of sight. You had the choice to either go up the steps that led to the higher floors, or you could go to the right, down about five steps to a lower level. I then spotted my army green bag swinging from his hand, just inside a classroom on the lower floor. I yelled for him to toss my bag up, and told him that this childish act was not funny. He said nothing in response. He never showed his face or the rest of his body, but merely had his arm extended out of the classroom with my bag in his hand, swinging it to and fro. My thought was that I could take three steps down and because of my six-foot frame, I could hold onto the banister and lean forward to retrieve my bag, but that was exactly what he wanted me to do. I didn’t think that I was in the kind of peril that would soon await me, until I reached for the bag. 

He quickly grabbed my arm and yanked me inside of the classroom. Then and only then did I realize that I WAS IN TROUBLE. He was about 6’4” tall, strong, and had undoubtedly done this before. The lock to the door, as it turned out, locked from the inside. I couldn’t believe it!  The next few moments moved with a violent precision. He quickly locked the door and covered my mouth. He slammed me against the wall pining me with his body, his right arm bent and pressing his forearm against my throat, choking me. I fought him hard with everything in me, but I couldn’t break free. I tried kneeing him, punching him, head butting him, kicking him, but all attempts failed. I wondered where were people… the students, the professors, building staff?  No one walked by. The building was absolutely empty!!!  I looked toward the door, hoping that I’d see someone, anyone pass by, but no one. I looked at the lock to see how I could escape if I became free; what I needed to do to get out of there, but the fight had become too intense. 

I later learned that the one thing HE knew that I was unaware of was that the School of Religion was under renovation. He knew this!!! He knew that the building would be empty, that the first room on the right had a lock on it that would lock from the inside, and he KNEW that he had a new freshman, a new victim, and of all the places for this to happen,  in the School of Religion!!!  I was using every part of my body to fight him off, but through my muffled screams, he was winning. He fumbled at his zipper and pulled out his penis.  He lifted me up and slammed me onto a large desk.  BOOM!!! My body hit hard, but thankfully my head was shielded by my bag that he’d already thrown there earlier. With determination to fight til the end, whatever that was to look like, I continued trying to fend him off. Still holding his penis with one hand and covering my mouth with the other, he finally climaxed and made a terrible mess all over my favorite navy blue slacks. It was during this time of his weakness that I moved in such a way that I freed myself from under him. I ran to the door with my bag in hand and turned the latch, freeing myself from him and that room. I ran and ran and ran and ran til I was exhausted. I ran in the direction of my late class and immediately went into the ladies room. I was crying and trembling and trying to scrub his awful deposit off of me. I was a wreck, yet thankful that I got out of there when I did. 

Despite what I went through that evening, believe it or not, I still went to my late class. I sat in the back of the room (in a class that I normally sat in the front), but I was present. Today, I ask myself so many questions: Why did I go to class afterwards? Why didn’t I report this crime to the campus police or to the Washington, D.C. police? Why didn’t I call my boyfriend? Why didn’t I go home?  Why?  Many things that I could’ve done, but I did none of those things. I went to class. I can only think that, during this traumatic experience, I felt shame, as though I did something wrong. In my young mind, I sat in that classroom trying to hold on to a sliver of normalcy… of control.   

I thought of my Great-Grandmother and not wanting to disappoint her by getting derailed from my education; getting into trouble. I never told her or my family members, and only very few people. That night, I did tell my boyfriend at the time, who was a student at another college. To his credit, he didn’t go to school for a week and accompanied me to every class I went to, waiting for me outside of each classroom, to walk me to the next. He saw that I was changed and was hoping that I would see the guy and let him handle it; let him defend my honor. Honestly, I did see him once during that week. He was in a crowd of about 15 other guys. My boyfriend knew immediately that I saw him because I stared into the crowd of guys, shaking.  My boyfriend began yelling at me to identify him, but I didn’t and pleaded with him for us to walk on. I was afraid, not just for me, but for my boyfriend.  I imagined him getting jumped, arrested, or worse, I imagined my name on the front page of the campus newspaper, and be the girl that everyone whispered about and pointed at for the rest of my time at Howard. So I said nothing. The fear of what would follow: the fight, the fallout, the shame. Surprisingly, after that day, I never saw Howard the attempted rapist again for the remainder of my life at HU. 

Make no mistake about it, that day changed me. I developed an intense interest in guns, weaponry, safety, defense, security, and protection. I became keenly aware of my surroundings but REFUSED to live in fear. I better understood that you can’t tell “the bad people” by just looking at a person. Because of that day, I have almost no memories of my college life. My priorities became studying, internships, securing a good job in my field, and to be successful.  So, despite this horrific encounter, I didn’t let it break me… I won!!! I graduated from Howard University, cum laude, receiving my B.A.  Within three months I went to work at a top television network and remained there for forty years. I traveled, I married, I own property, and live a great life. I know that I made my Great-Grandmother proud before she left this life, and I know that I didn’t let that sick monster win. 

Maybe someone will read this or listen to it and feel less alone. Maybe someone will see the strength in survival, in reclaiming your narrative.  Silence doesn’t protect us. Sharing does. And if you’re listening to this, whether something like this happened to your or to someone you love, know this: you are not alone, you are not to blame, and you can live a full and beautiful life beyond the trauma. The glass may be stained, and it may be cracked, but the glass didn’t break.

(Did you hear that?  That was me, exhaling).

[ appropriate music ]

HOST: 

Today’s episode was produced by Rob Wallace and myself.

We want to thank Regina Blackburn again for retelling a painful part of her past that was tucked away for so long, and for sharing her healthy journey away from it. Some of the music you heard in this episode was from Regina as well, another meaningful expression of how she channeled her pain into something beautiful. 

We hope by sharing her story, others may find they too have a path forward beyond their own trauma.  To repeat her own words, “maybe someone will hear this and feel less alone. Maybe someone will see the strength in survival and reclaim their own narrative. Silence doesn’t protect us. Sharing does.”

If you or someone you love has been sexually assaulted or abused, no matter how recent or far back in time it was, you are not alone. There are those who can help. RAINN is the nation’s largest anti-sexual-assault organization and a national leader in online crisis intervention services, all which are free, confidential and available 24/7.

You can contact RAINN anytime, day or night, and connect with a real, live person who’s trained to help. Call them at 800-656 HOPE, or chat with them online at RAINN.org or simply text HOPE to 64673 to talk with someone today. Someone who can help.

Did you have an event or experience in college that shaped your life?  We’d love to talk with you about it. We‘re looking to share other stories that may have occurred outside of a class or lecture, but still taught us some of life’s most meaningful lessons. Your story doesn’t have to be tragic. It can be downright pant-wettingly funny, as many of stories in our other episodes are.

Finally, if you had any reaction to this or any other episode in our podcast, let us know. The feedback helps us shape and structure what we produce.

Until then, I’m Pete Griffith, back next week with more stories like this, all from a time Once, In College.