Students and Graduates File Lawsuit Against Missouri Over Lincoln University

Students and graduates filed a lawsuit against Missouri on Wednesday, alleging that decades of underfunding at Lincoln University undermined student education and devalued degrees. The legal action marks the kickoff of a broader campaign by the newly formed 1890 Project to target more than a dozen states over historical funding inequities at land-grant historically Black colleges and universities.

The Lawsuit Against Lincoln University

The lawsuit focuses squarely on Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, which was founded at the end of the Civil War by a Black Union Army unit that pooled their wages. According to the newly filed complaint, the institution was underfunded by $361 million from 1987 through 2020 based on federal numbers.

It is very unfortunate that we still live in a climate where, depending on the color of one’s skin, one gets precedence over the other, said Jeanneth Johnson, a 54-year-old Lincoln graduate from Sterling Heights, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Enrollment at Lincoln has fallen to roughly 2,200 students. That is down from about 3,400 students in 2011. It remains a small fraction of the approximately 32,000 students enrolled at the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus.

Representatives for the University of Missouri system and the governor’s office released written statements indicating they could not comment on pending litigation. Don Calloway, a former Missouri state lawmaker who leads the 1890 Project, argued that the federal government funded Lincoln with proper parity but the state chose not to match the appropriation.

The problem is that the state made an intentional choice not to match the federal appropriation. And that’s where Lincoln really was cheated, Calloway said.

Decades of Federal Funding Disparities

The legal strategy roots itself in federal land-grant legislation enacted after the Civil War. Senator Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont sponsored the original Morrill Act of 1862, which granted public lands to states to fund colleges focusing on practical fields like agriculture and engineering. A second law passed in 1890 required states to either open those land-grant institutions to students of all races or establish separate land-grant schools for Black students.

Missouri established its separate land-grant school at what was then called Lincoln Institute. Seventeen other mostly former Confederate and border states established 18 other land-grant schools for Black students, including Tuskegee University, which is the only private 1890 land grant.

Federal law mandates an equitable distribution of state funding for all land-grant universities. However, an analysis conducted in 2023 by the administration of then-President Joe Biden revealed that HBCUs across 16 states missed out on $12.6 billion in funding over the prior three decades. That federal review found that only two states—Delaware and Ohio—funded their traditional and HBCU land-grant schools equitably.

Herbert Kitchen, a retired California community college administrator and plaintiff in the lawsuit, attended Lincoln in the 1980s. He recalled that his residence hall frequently lacked heat and hot water. His great-great-grandfather, Caleb Lindsey, was one of the soldiers whose pay helped found the institution.

I am, Kitchen said, the hope and dream that my great-grandfather had when he was a slave.

Future Legal Targets Across Multiple States

The 1890 Project is concentrating its initial legal strategy strictly on 1890s land-grant institutions rather than the dozens of other HBCUs founded by nonprofits and religious groups. Calloway stated that discussions are underway with state attorneys general in several other states regarding funding gaps.

Those targeted states include Virginia, Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. Similar lawsuits over HBCU underfunding have unfolded in multiple states over the decades. A legal challenge in Maryland previously resulted in a $577 million settlement.

We expect to negotiate and/or litigate in multiple jurisdictions over the next year, Calloway said. Missouri is the first.