Tracking the Receipts: Revealing Federal Funding Disparities Between Maryland's Black and White Land-Grant Colleges, 1887–1939

• In Event: 54.018 - Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

The history of American higher education emphasizes the First and Second Morrill Acts as the first federal grants specifically appropriated to expand the system of higher education. By the establishment of public institutions with the special mission of mechanical and agricultural education, these funds were what Samuel Shannon called the “legislative mechanism” for “the democratization of educational opportunity.” Yet, under the direction of state legislatures, the appropriation received from the selling of public lands was woefully and disproportionately distributed between historically White and Black colleges. Severe public funding disparities beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are the genesis of more than a century of state underfunding and undervaluing of Black colleges.

Author

• Katherine Ica Elizabeth Wheatle, Institute for Higher Education Policy