The NBA legend and TV analyst told reporters last week that he intended to donate to Bethune-Cookman University and Jackson State University.
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- Charles Barkley announced he’ll donate $1 million each to Bethune-Cookman University and Jackson State University.
- He has donated millions of dollars to various HBCUs since 2016.
- Barkley told Alabama Media Group that he intends to use the rest of his life to bless as many people as possible.
NBA legend and television analyst Charles Barkley is making big donations to two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). He just hasn’t told them yet.
Last week, Barkley announced that he intends to give $1 million each to Bethune-Cookman University in Florida and Jackson State University in Mississippi. Now, he’ll have to call up their respective advancement offices to let them know.
Barkley has personal sports connections at Bethune-Cookman: Its men’s basketball team is coached by Barkley’s “NBA brother” Reggie Theus, who played with Barkley for seven seasons.
The donation to Jackson State University was inspired by the news that the school’s former football coach Deion Sanders had accepted the head football coaching job at the University of Colorado, Barkley told Alabama Media Group.
“They’re probably gonna take a little hit with him leaving, so I want to show them some love because, man, what he accomplished there was pretty extraordinary,” he said.
Barkley played basketball at Auburn University, followed by 16 seasons in the NBA for three teams. He also competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games, winning two gold medals as a member of the U.S. men’s basketball team.
Since 2000, he’s been an NBA analyst on TNT and has won four Sports Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Studio Analyst.”
This isn’t the first time that Barkley has donated to HBCUs.
In 2016, he donated $1 million each to Alabama A&M University and Clark Atlanta University in Georgia. Morehouse College in Georgia received a $1 million donation from Barkley in 2017. In 2020, he donated $1 million each to Miles College and Tuskegee University, both in Alabama. And last summer, he donated $1 million to Spelman College in Georgia.
In 2021, he also gave $1,000 to every employee of his former high school system, Alabama’s Leeds City Schools. He also pledged free internet service and 200 computers for the school system’s students.
Barkley also announced he will donate $1 million to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research in Alabama in the name of his former Auburn teammate Gary Godfrey, who was diagnosed with ALS in January 2019.
“I’m [expletive] 60 [years old] in a couple of months, which is crazy,” Barkley told Alabama Media Group. “All this [expletive] money is crazy. I’m gonna use the rest of my life to bless as many people as I possibly can.”
