Jackson Free Press: Mississippi State Got More Than $257.8 Million of Alcorn State Agricultural Funds
From Jackson Free Press …
The State of Mississippi has shortchanged Alcorn State University $257,807,216 in agricultural funds from the federal government over the last 30 years, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack wrote in a letter on Sept. 18, 2023.
The Second Morrill Act of 1890 states that in order to establish a second land-grant college for the purpose of creating racially separate colleges, a state must distribute federal land-grant funds equitably between the institutions. Mississippi has not done so. The same holds true for 15 other states that were found guilty of similar robberies. Of the states with racially created land-grant colleges, only Ohio and Delaware have clean hands. U.S. states have robbed America’s historically Black land-grant colleges as a group of $12.6 billion over the last 30 years.
Instead of state leaders in Mississippi equitably distributing its federal land-grant allocations between Alcorn State University and Mississippi State University, MSU has long gotten the lion’s share of the funds. I have studied the robbery going back as far as the 1973 figures compiled for the Ayers litigation, including the 2024 allocations. In 2024, ASU received 7.8 percent of the agricultural funds, while MSU received 92.2 percent. If the figures are adjusted to count the veterinarian medical school funds separately, ASU would still have only received 10 percent of the funds.
An irony in this situation is that MSU was not established until 1878, seven years after ASU. Mississippi State came into being after the University of Mississippi decided it no longer desired to operate agricultural and industrial programs. Meanwhile, Alcorn State was busily engaged in agricultural research and training for Black citizens.
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