After college basketball season, there aren’t any tournaments that highlight the athletic abilities of HBCU students. This didn’t sit well with Bellamy, who decided to take matters into his own hands. A dream he had further confirmed his desire to make a change.

“This may sound weird to some of you, but I had a dream in November,” Bellamy said in an interview with the Raleigh News and Observer via Yahoo! Sports. “And I could see it, as clear as day: Us having this basketball tournament here in Charlotte.”

He added, “I called my best friend, Russell Stewart. I said, ‘Russ. I know this is gonna sound wild, but I had a dream about this basketball tournament. We have to do this here.’ And he told me: ‘Nothing you do is ever wild, because what you always put your mind to, you do.'”

The Black College Invitational Championship will make its debut in Charlotte, North Carolina. From March 20-23, 2025, talented men and women from 16 Division I and Division II teams in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association(CIAA) and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) conferences will compete at the Bojangles Coliseum. The event is set to bring national attention to Black and minority students who tend not to receive as much coverage. Local Black-owned businesses will also be highlighted.

This brings an HBCU basketball tournament back to Charlotte as they notable hosted the CIAA tourney from 2006 to 2020.

The tournament also has the support of Charlotte’s first female Mayor Vi Lyles, whose focus has been ensuring that Black students have access to educational and business resources.

“After George Floyd died, the city of Charlotte began to think deeply about: ‘What does it mean to include people of color in what we do?’” Lyles said. “And we did a lot of great things, which made a big difference, but we also worked with the business community. One of the first things they said to me was, ‘If you want us to be a part of this, what do you want us to do?’”

She continued, “And I told them: ‘I don’t want to be the mayor who Johnson C. Smith fails on.’ So we raised money and initiatives that would be possible for these young people to come to college.”

Former NAACP national board member Lenny Springs is rooting for the success of the BCIC tournament after seeing what HBCU basketball athletes bring to major sports enterprises.

“I look at this as an opportunity to expose Black colleges to the entire community,” Springs said in support of BCIC. “Let’s not get it twisted: HBCUs play some of the best basketball in the country. I can give you a number of names of HBCU players who are now in the NBA.”

“HBCU basketball is not inferior. They just don’t get the exposure of predominantly white institutions,” he added.

Visit BlackCollegeInvitationalChampionship.org for tickets.