Abstract

Excerpted From: Jasmine N. Cooper, Battle of the Lands: The Creation of Land Grant Institutions and HBCUs--Fostering a Still Separate and Still Unequal Higher Education System, 30 Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice 247 (Spring, 2024) (181 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Imagine: the year is 1855 in a rural town in Maryland. You are born to a slave woman by the name of Maryam. You are her 8th child, but half of your siblings either died as infants from malnourishment or have subsequently been sold off to other plantations to pay the debts of your slaveholder. Your complexion is lighter than your mom, your paternity marked as unknown, yet everyone on the plantation knows the truth. When you were first born you had a few weeks to spend time with your mother but shortly after she was forced to return to the field every day at sunrise and you were left with an older woman who was no longer able to labor.

Now, as the offspring of a slave woman your legal status in the United States was similar to that of a domestic animal. You were no different than the very chickens you chased around the plantation for fun as a young child. As a child on a plantation you had to learn to not only obey your mother but also your owners and overseers.

At the age of 6 you received your first job, caring for the child of your overseer as their personal servant. A perk of your job was that you were around for everything he learned, including his daily tutoring sessions of reading and writing. From your observations, you were able to pick up on words and learned to read and write on your own. You keep your skills and knowledge secret because you know what happens to slaves who learn to read and write and the consequences you would face if anyone found out.

Slavery was a dehumanizing and egregious institution in our nation that held African Americans in bondage for generations. This bondage was not only physical but spiritual, emotional, and psychological. Chattel slavery in the United States was also rooted in racism and white supremacy with the goal of allowing slaveholders to maintain ultimate control. One way that control was maintained was by forbidding the enslaved from learning to read and write. Many states passed anti-literacy laws that disallowed the teaching of the enslaved. Despite the legal and social barriers, many people were still able to secretly learn the skills. Enslaved persons took the risk to learned because even in a system of chattel slavery many saw the value of education and being able to think for oneself.

Education has been deeply embedded in the history of the United States. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin is known for promoting education as an essential element in the development of a child and how its presence was instrumental in upholding democracy. As the United States became more industrialized, higher education was painted as the key to the American Dream for everyday Americans. Yet the very country that proports higher education as a “golden ticket” to prosperity is the same country where higher education was once only exclusively available to the wealthy elite. Women, Jewish people, Irish Americans, Black and Brown people were intentionally barred from entering these spaces of higher education. In 1862 with the passage of the first Morrill Act and the establishment of land grant institutions, higher education finally opened up to a boarder spectrum of American society. These schools were intended to educate poor white workers to become a new middle class of managers. After the Civil War, with slavery coming to an end, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) emerged to educate the newly freed slaves of America, forming a corresponding Black school for each white land grant institution.

Now imagine the two children from earlier 11 years later. Because of the Morrill Act, the child of the poor white overseer gets to attend the University of Maryland and the former slave child attends Baltimore Normal School. The poor white child is being educated at a school intended to train him to become a member of a newfound middle class while the former slave child only has remedial classes available to him at a school with a completely different purpose.

Today, HBCUs are responsible for developing a large percentage of Black students in America. Despite HBCUs being founded as normal schools with less resources and representing only 3 percent of all higher education institutions in the United States, HBCUs have educated 10 percent of all Black students in the United States. HBCUs enroll twice as many Pell-Grant eligible students as other non HBCU institutions, yet HBCU graduates are 51 percent more likely to move into a higher economic bracket than they were born into than graduates of non-HBCUs. HBCUs also serve as a pipeline to professional schools looking for talented Black students, most notably by supplying the highest amount of Black applicants of any other type of University. HBCUs are also responsible for 80 percent of all Black judges, 50 percent of all Black lawyers, 40 percent of all Black engineers, 40 percent of all Black US Congress members, and 12.5 percent of Black CEOs. These colleges and universities are able to produce compelling results all while being historically underfunded, an action that still effects these institutions today. Despite the impact that HBCUs have had on the Black community, the number of successful alumni the institutions create, and the level of economic mobility an HBCU education can wield, the legitimacy of HBCUs in the modern day higher education sphere continues to be questioned. Some scholars argue that HBCUs are not quality institutions and have failed to achieve the quality and reputation of their counterpart institutions.

It is no secret that these institutions are underfunded compared to their peer institutions, especially public HBCUs that rely on the federal government and the state for funding. For decades, all HBCUs have struggled to survive off of less financial support than Predominantly White Institutions (“PWIs”). The reason HBCUs are faced with this lack of funding is because of the dual education system that was not only encouraged, but sanctioned, by the federal government, allowing states to get away with segregation for far too long. From the creation of anti-literacy laws, HBCUs in the North founded by white missionaries to spread the Gospel, Southern states refusing to integrate, to federal and state governments continuing to control the funding of many HBCUs, it is clear that white control over Black literacy and development still lives today.

This Note argues that the original purpose of HBCUs was never to be equal to white institutions but to keep Blacks out of state land-grant institutions that were founded to train poor whites to create a middle class of managers. Brown v. Board of Education was supposed to fix the problem of separate but equal, but it did not. The only way to fulfill Brown's promise is to properly fund HBCUs today. Part II gives a historical background on the founding of HBCUs and how their founding created a government sanctioned dual education system. Part III explores the historical patterns of unequal access to education in the United States from the Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson to key cases that desegregated K-12 and higher education in the United States. Part IV explores a recently settled lawsuit between the State of Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) and the states four public HBCUs. Finally, Part V gives policy solutions for how the federal government can right past wrongs in HBCU funding and create a cohesive higher education system that allows for all students regardless of race or the institution they choose to attend, to have access to equal educational opportunity.

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The current higher education system we have is not working to provide equitable education for all people. With the passage of the first and second Morrill Act, the federal government is responsible for creating a higher education system that allows for the unequal funding of HBCUs compared to their corresponding white land grant institutions. Instead of holding the states responsible, the government charged the states with fixing the problem and it is no surprise remnants of a de jure segregated system are still present today. In order to ensure that Black students have equal protection under the law if or when they choose to attend an HBCU, the federal government must take a more active role in supporting HBCUs. That role must go further than the currently implemented “federal support.” In the United States, we have not come as far as we would like to think when it comes to equal and equitable access to educational opportunities. The only way to redress this lack of progress is by financially and physically building up HBCUs.

J.D. Candidate, May 2024, Washington and Lee University School of Law.