State-run, land-grant HBCUs — including one in Georgia — are owed more than $13 billion, the White House says

Land-grant, historically Black colleges and universities have missed out on more than $13 billion they should have gotten in the last three decades or so, according to letters the Biden administration sent to the governors of 16 states appealing to them to invest more money in HBCUs.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack sent letters to the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Cardona and Vilsack cited data from the National Center for Education Statistics and found that the gap in funding “could have supported infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the university to compete for research grants,” and 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.”

The schools mentioned in the letters were established under the Morrill acts. The Morrill Act of 1860 gave states 30,000 acres to establish public colleges and universities, such as Auburn University, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky and more.

But because of the discrimination and exclusion Black students faced at those schools, the second Morrill Act was passed in 1890, mandating that states either consider Black students equally or found separate land-grant schools for them, some of which included: