HAMPTON, Virginia – As part of Zuri Murph’s urban policy class at Hampton University, she was assigned a question: Do Black people deserve reparations. Murph wrote about how reparations should be paid back to Black land grant colleges.
“Reparations should be paid in part to HBCUs, since y’all are already scamming us,” the graduating senior said. “So if we’re going to talk about reparations, let’s just throw in what we should be doing anyway.”
But what Murph didn’t know was that Hampton was once a land grant college.
In 1920, Hampton University was stripped of its land grant status during a wave of segregation-era policies — cutting the university off from decades of potential federal funding for research that includes marine science and pharmaceuticals, as well as agriculture and biomedicine. Now, a bill in the Virginia legislature aims to make amends and help the university recoup the money lost over the past century.
In January, state Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, introduced Senate Bill 274, which called for Hampton to regain its land grant status and for the state to create a restoration fund for the university. The Virginia Senate passed the bill unanimously and is now before the state House’s higher education committee. If passed by the House, the bill will be presented to Gov. Abigail Spanberger to be signed into law.
“Why not have it re-established for an institution that still has a mission dedicated to workforce development and the same issue for which it was initially established in the first place?” Locke told Capital B.
When Locke first introduced the bill in January, many students outside the Olin Engineering Building and Thomas W. Turner Hall, where most natural sciences classes are held, didn’t know what land grant status meant.
Nearly a month later, the campus is buzzing about the possibility of the university being attached to funding that experts call sustainable due to its ties to congressional legislation written more than a century ago.
What are land grant institutions?
The Morrill Act of 1862 created land grant institutions by giving states 30,000 acres of land and funding to establish institutions for teaching, research, and extension services in agriculture, military sciences, and mechanical arts. These colleges receive additional federal and state funding to support students studying agriculture, science, nutrition and military.
As it turned out, many of these colleges didn’t accept Black and other students of color, leading to the second Morrill Act of 1890. States could either establish separate land grant institutions for Black students or prove that admission to existing 1862 institutions was not restricted by race. Many states opted to make separate-but-equal land grant institutions, with 19 historically Black colleges, also known as 1890 institutions, being created.
Today, Black land grant Black college play a critical role in research and in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. However, a federal investigation in 2023 found that 16 states had been underfunding their historically Black colleges and universities by more than $12 billion for decades.
Murph comes from a family of HBCU graduates, including Tennessee State University, which has been underfunded by nearly $2.1 billion, according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Originally from Atlanta, Murph, who uses they/them pronouns, always had an interest in STEM. At first, they wanted to be an environmental lawyer. Their parents raised them immersed in nature: frequent camping and a trip to watch wild horses run along a Maryland beach were common in their childhood.
Today, Murph said they might not be able to attend an HBCU that’s hundreds of miles away from home without scholarship money.
“Almost all of my friends I know are here on scholarships and scholarships like mine that are over $20,000,” Murph said. “As someone who is from Atlanta, most people went to the University of Georgia, because that’s your local state school. Hampton, for me, was not really an option unless I had a scholarship.”
Funding for land grant colleges comes from state and federal sources. The money can be used for research projects, materials, and programming.
Those hoping to attend land grant HBCUs can also apply to the USDA 1890 National Scholars Program, which covers full tuition, fees, books, room and board, and a summer internship.
What happened to Hampton?
In 1920, Virginia removed Hampton’s land grant status, cutting the coastal university off from benefits not just for programs but scholarships and job pathways. Their reasoning was that the state already has two land grant institutions: Virginia Tech, a predominantly white institution and Virginia State University, an HBCU located near Petersburg.
“The understanding was in certain states that when they established the 1890 institutions, there could only be one Black institution that could be a federal land grant,” said Felecia Commodore, associate professor of education policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “It seemed that it was communicated, or that this was a federal law, but what was found out is that it was never actually a law.”
Locke, the state senator who is also an HBCU graduate, said people question why Hampton, a private institution, was receiving land grant funds when the state already had a 1890 institution.
“We have to point out this was the height of Jim Crow,” she said. “One of the parts of the rationale in 1920 that was used for taking the land grant status away; ‘Oh, we have a public institution that’s Black, so we don’t need to give it to a private institution.’”
However, Locke pointed out that Alabama has two 1890 colleges, Tuskegee University and Alabama A&M University. In addition, Cornell and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known as MIT, are private universities receiving land grant funds.
When Commodore first heard the news, she was taken aback. For one, she didn’t know Hampton was a 1890 institution. Second, she said the school’s story sounded similar to Tuskegee University’s.
Like Hampton, Tuskegee is a private institution, but its land grant status remained in effect even after the unspoken rule spread throughout the states.
Prior to 1890, Alabama paid to send its Black students elsewhere for graduate school. When the Second Morrill Act surfaced, Alabama A&M couldn’t sustain graduate programs for Black students, but Tuskegee could.
In the end, the state chose to invest in both HBCUs to comply with the separate-but-equal law.
“There was always this investment from the state into Tuskegee for that reason,” Commodore said. “I wouldn’t say they’re the same, but we’re thinking about options and what’s law, what’s not law, how the state wants to spend its money during this time … You can see some of the ways decisions were being made.”
How does land grant status benefit Black students?
Today, the federal Department of Agriculture and its partners cover tuition costs and provide temporary jobs for students at 19 land grant HBCUs.
If Hampton regains its land grant status, Murph can only imagine what it would mean for the college’s small marine biology program, which often conducts research on local wildlife.
“Within the marine science building, our teachers are working really, really hard, and our faculty are working really, really hard to secure grants so that their personal lab can have the equipment that it needs,” they said. But they don’t always see that same support for some of their peers in general science courses.
Now, Hampton students are eager to see the benefits that land grant status could bring to them and to the institution’s legacy.