HBCU Chess Spotlight: Caleb Parker (FAMU)

Florida A&M University, also known as “FAMU” (FAM-U), chartered its chess club in January after a year of planning. Caleb Parker met with Dr. Daaim Shabazz in early 2023 to discuss the possibility of reigniting the chess presence at one of the nation’s largest Black universities.

Historically-Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have traditionally been places where students express various interests, and there have always been chess players dotting campuses around the nation. There are likely to be photos in yearbooks that have yet to be unearthed in the modern era. Howard University has a 100-year hisstory of chess on the campus. What about FAMU?

In the early 2000s, FAMU had a chess presence and hosted tournaments and club meetings. The community eventually died out due to the club’s failure to hold elections. There followed a long period of random chess in various parts of the campus. After participating in the 2023 HBCU Chess Classic, Parker and Shabazz had meetings at Black Dog Cafe on how to create a unified campus presence.

In the following school year, Parker started looking for other players and prior to the 2024 HBCU Chess Classic found engineering student, Daniel Buckley. Both traveled the to the tournament where Parker surprisingly won the individual championship. This victory started a string of marketing activities to build the community.

First was the publicity surrounding Parker’s triumph. Dr. Shabazz contacted the FAMUan which ran a story and that would add to the buzz created by the announcements at The Chess Drum.

One of the first activities was to began meeting in a high visibility area where the players would encounter “walk-by traffic.” The Set would be the staging ground for weekly casual play. There was QR code created for a Google Docs form and the regular meetings on Set Friday would begin to reap rewards.

Ricardo Stewart, a senior in Architecture, was one of the first to join the movement. He had been organizing chess meetups amongst Architecture students. After a semester of meetups, the FAMU Chess Club officially recognized January 28th as a student organization after more than 20 years of being dormant.

FAMU Chess Club 2024-2025 Executive Board
Seated (L-R): Toron Jones (Treasurer, Music Education), Caleb Parker (President-Computer Science); Standing (L-R): James Tinner (Secretary, Computer Info. Sys), Dr. Daaim Shabazz (Faculty Advisor-Business), Ricardo Stewart (Vice President-Architecture)

The FAMU Chess Club participated in the Club Fair and attracted attention with a slide show of “Set Friday” meetings and the orange and green chess set. One of the students who walked up happened to be Amara Fisher, a journalism student. She is a member of the Marching 100 and in the trumpet section with James Tinner and Toron Jones.

After gaining over 100 followers on GroupMe, momentum continued as the club held the first of two tournaments. The second was a qualifier for who would travel to Atlanta for the HBCU Chess Classic. After that, there was registration, fundraising, and a training session for the event. The group raised over $2,000 in a GoFundMe fundraiser and was headed to Atlanta!

Photos by Daaim Shabazz/The Chess Drum

Parker had meticulously organized an itinerary and led the group as the veteran of the student group. His leadership shone throughout the semester and after the Classic he explained the evolution of the club. It was a successful beginning and the trip capped off a successful event to build on the 2025-2026 year. Here was Parker’s interview…

Caleb Parker, Florida A&M University

Video by Daaim Shabazz/The Chess Drum