In the late 19th century, the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 helped fund public universities that opened up higher education to larger segments of the nation.
For decades, HBCUs have helped Black and Latino young people — many of whom are first-generation college students or from low-income families — move up the socioeconomic ladder at a faster rate than they would at most white institutions, said Mary Beth Gasman, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University.
For more than a century, HBCUs have strived to serve and educate Black students, often without the equivalent support that predominantly white institutions receive. Lesser funding, in some cases, has affected operations, hiring of faculty, programming and the quality of facilities.
“Almost all of their (HBCUs) struggles go back to financial concerns,” said Gasman. “They’re not just these struggling places. They struggle because of financial reasons.”
Legal Action
In 2001 the state of Mississippi settled a decades long lawsuit on behalf of its three public HBCUs --Alcorn, Mississippi Valley State, and Jackson State, which required the state to create new programs at the schools and make more than $500 million in new investments in the schools.
Since then, Maryland’s four historically Black colleges — Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University and the University of Maryland, Maryland just finalized a $577 million settlement to end a 15-year federal lawsuit relating to underfunding at the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities. The money from the settlement will be used to boost the colleges’ academic programs, assist the institutions in becoming more competitive to appeal to prospective students and to help bridge gaps within higher education in the state.
And just recently, a study by the Tennessee Legislature found that between 1956-2020 that the state had short changed Tennessee State University (TSU), it’s predominately black university by about $544 million by not matching its required federal land grant.
When TSU was founded, the state government designated the college and the University of Tennessee (UT) as land grant institutions. As land grants the state was required to ensure that for every dollar sent by the federal government to fund the schools, the state of Tennessee would match that amount.
Now the University is citing years of unpaid land grant matches.
Land grants funded with stolen land
Federal land grant universities established by the Morrill Act first distributed public-domain lands to states that could then be used or sold to build the financial endowments of universities. Yet, the 10.7 million acres for this project were actually Indigenous lands, confiscated through seizure or suspect land treaties.
A recent investigative report by High Country News (HCN), in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and the Fund for Investigative Journalism, reveals that the money made from these land sales continues to benefit (flagship) universities, and at least 12 states continue to hold titles to unsold acres and profit from associated mineral rights.
Iowa was the first state to establish a land grant university in 1862, assigning the land to what later became Iowa State University. Another 33 states soon followed, and 13 more did so by 1910. Five states split the endowment, mostly in the South, where several historically Black colleges became partial beneficiaries. Kentucky, for example, allocated 87% of its endowment to white students at the University of Kentucky and 13% to Black students at Kentucky State University.
When setting up the land-grant system lawmakers included a clause prohibiting racial discrimination in admissions. Yet, rather than enforcing the integration of land-grant schools, the law provided funds to Southern states so they could build separate and underfunded historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). FAMU, NC A&T, Southern, Tennessee State, Alcorn, Alabama A&M, were among those original 1890 land-grant colleges.
With that decision, the federal government used higher education policy to help reinforce racial segregation and establish a government-funded Jim Crow university system. This system emerged six years before the “separate but equal doctrine” of Plessy v. Ferguson became the law of the land.
HBCUs were founded in the cauldron of segregation and evolved over time through the debates between the merits of an industrial art (hence the names A&M and A&T) or liberal arts education to occupy a special space in the pantheon of American higher education. Founded during a period of hostile, entrenched and legally enforced segregation, by most accounts, these institutions have exceeded expectations in unforeseen ways.
Over the years, the federal government tended to “de-emphasize” the role of Black colleges in improving the country, not giving them enough support but expecting them to produce positive results, sociologist Daniel C. Thompson noted in his 1973 book “Private Black Colleges at the Crossroads.”
In recent years, the federal government has begun to make an about face in an attempt to level the playing field.
Unequal philanthropy
While mega-philanthropists continue to give large sums of money to the Top 5 private Black colleges and to nationally known predominantly white colleges that already boast huge endowments. New York businessman Michael Bloomberg, for example, pledged $100 million to be distributed among four HBCU medical schools last year and another $6 million in April, but he donated a full $150 million to Harvard University and has given at least $3.3 billion over the years to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.
As civil rights activist and historian Rodney Hurst noted, “you can’t simply draw water from a well, you have to refill”
“For too long, many argue that public black colleges should not operate at the public’s expense do so because they consider these institutions to be “racially identifiable,” Hurst added. “Missing from this argument is that white institutions are also racially identifiable.”
“Too often, diversity or integration is defined as “start with white people and add people of color. Nobody is willing to address the fact that most of our flagship universities were financed with stolen lands.”
Unequal philanthropy
While mega-philanthropists continue to give large sums of money to the Top 5 private Black colleges and to nationally known predominantly white colleges that already boast huge endowments. New York businessman Michael Bloomberg, for example, pledged $100 million to be distributed among four HBCU medical schools last year and another $6 million in April, but he donated a full $150 million to Harvard University and has given at least $3.3 billion over the years to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.
“Too often, diversity or integration is defined as “start with white people and add people of color. Nobody is willing to address the fact that most of our flagship universities were financed with stolen lands.”