Georgia could owe HBCU $603 million. A team of lawyers intends to collect.

For three decades, Georgia and other states collectively underfunded their historically Black land-grant universities by roughly $13 billion, according to a 2023 federal analysis.

Now, a team of attorneys says it’s time to pay up.

A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Missouri, featuring three Georgia plaintiffs, kicks off a potential reckoning for many Southern states. It argues that Missouri violated federal law and the U.S. Constitution by failing to fund Lincoln University — the state’s land-grant HBCU — at the same rate as its predominantly white counterpart, the University of Missouri.

The result? Lincoln lost out on $361 million over thirty years, according to the lawsuit. “The harms alleged are not historical abstractions,” it reads. “The injury to each [plaintiff] is personal, concrete, and continuing.”

Later this month, The 1890 Project, the same group behind the Missouri litigation, said it intends to make their case to Georgia’s elected officials. According to the same analysis that reached Lincoln’s $361 million figure, Georgia’s land-grant HBCU, Fort Valley State University, is owed $603 million.

That funding gap has demonstrably harmed alumni of the Middle Georgia school, said Don Calloway, an attorney with The 1890 Project. Not only did it lessen their educational experience, he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it diminished their ability to compete for higher wage positions and higher caliber opportunities.

“These are people who have played by the rules, have stayed out of trouble, have proceeded according to the path that leads to the American Dream,” said Calloway. “The state does not have a right to economically rip off students and alumni of Fort Valley State by creating a substandard product.”

Memories of the Morrill Act

FVSU is one of 19 HBCUs often known as 1890 institutions. The name derives from the Morrill Act of 1890, federal legislation that required Southern states either admit African Americans to existing land-grant universities or provide separate land-grant universities for Black students. Southern states overwhelmingly opted for the second option.

The 1890 institutions were to receive funding equal to their white land-grant counterparts. FVSU’s, for instance, had to be equitable with the University of Georgia. That didn’t happen, as President Biden’s administration made clear in a 2023 letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

FVSU “has not been able to advance in ways that are on par with University of Georgia... in large part due to unbalanced funding,” wrote the then-secretaries of the U.S. Departments of Education and Agriculture.

The letters to Kemp and governors in 15 other states offered specific numbers. Based on federal data, from 1987 to 2020, state funding to FVSU on a per student basis had been inadequate by $603,156,480.

“These funds could have supported infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the university to compete for research grants,” they wrote. “The longstanding and ongoing underinvestment in Fort Valley State University disadvantages the students, faculty, and community that the institution serves.”

A civil lawsuit that alleged the state of Georgia underfunded Fort Valley State and Georgia’s two other public HBCUs, Albany State and Savannah State universities, was filed in October 2023. The plaintiffs quietly agreed to dismiss the civil case in July 2024.

A last resort

In 16 letters, the Biden administration said it hoped “to avoid burdensome and costly litigation.”

So too does Calloway. He and his colleagues at The 1890 Project have been in communication with several Southern states about the alleged underfunding, aiming to reach a negotiated settlement. Sometime this month, they plan to start a dialogue with Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.

“We think litigation is a last resort. Unfortunately, we’ve reached that last resort in the state of Missouri,” he said. “But the best and highest use of everybody’s time is to not have to litigate this in the future, and to negotiate and settle because there is no dispute about the merits of the underfunding.”

With no settlement reached in Missouri, the lawsuit asks for roughly $549 million. The sum accounts for the $361 million the federal analysis determined Lincoln is owed, plus interest.

That money would go into a remedial fund overseen by a court appointed special master. It would be used for purposes that the parties agree address the harms caused by the underfunding, such as deferred maintenance, faculty positions, research capacity and student support services.

When the group comes to Georgia, it hopes to avoid that complicated legal process. Instead, according to Calloway and Cal Harris, a Morehouse College alum who serves as the group’s communications director, they want to get the money for FVSU budgeted in the upcoming legislative session. They don’t expect a one-time $603 million check, but for the money to be appropriated over a short period of time.

They’re banking on Georgia’s political environment to help get it done, anticipating a hospitable audience regardless of who wins the governor’s race in November. Calloway called Georgia’s Legislative Black Caucus “one of the strongest in the country,” and said he expects to be received warmly by Carr this month.

The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment.

While a $603 million price tag may seem daunting, Calloway noted that it does not include interest, “which it very well could.” He said the sum pales in comparison to the costs incurred by FVSU graduates. The alumni earn substantially less than UGA graduates, he said, “and much of that is because of the devaluing of the degrees that they earn because the school was directly underfunded.”