The Biden administration has sent letters to 16 states’ governors including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi and a few others, urging them to invest more in Historic Black Colleges and Universities. The negligence of the letters sent cost HBCUs to have missed out on over $13 billion in the past three decades.
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics were used by Cardona and Vilsack to determine the budget deficit, “could have supported infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the university to compete for research grants,” adding that the HBCUs “would be much stronger and better positioned to serve its students, your state, and the nation if made whole with respect to this funding gap.”
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The Morrill acts led to the establishment of the schools indicated in the letters. The 30,000 acres granted to states by the Morrill Act of 1860 were used to create public schools and institutions including Auburn University, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, and others.
However, the second Morrill Act, which required states to treat Black students equally or establish separate land-grant institutions for them, was passed in 1890 as a result of the prejudice and exclusion Black students experienced at those schools. These schools included some of the following: Alabama A&M University, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Florida A&M University , Fort Valley State University (Georgia), Kentucky State University, Southern University and A&M College (Louisiana), University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Alcorn State University (Mississippi), Lincoln University (Missouri), Langston University (Oklahoma), South Carolina State University, Tennessee State University , Prairie View A&M University (Texas), Virginia State University, and the North Carolina A&T State University.
The disparity between majority-Black and majority-white land-grant universities, such as the University of Florida, Louisiana State University, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Texas A&M University, and North Carolina State University, varied widely between $1 and $2 billion in Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina.
Cardona and Vilsack declared that “This is a situation that clearly predates all of us.” It was noted, “it is a problem that we can work together to solve. In fact, it is our hope that we can collaborate to avoid burdensome and costly litigation that has occurred in several states.”
