This story was reported and written by our media partner the Virginia Mercury.
The federal government denied Hampton University special funds for over 100 years because it believed that only one Black institution in Virginia could receive land-grant funding.
Now, state lawmakers want to overturn that 1920 decision and restore Hampton’s land-grant status. This is part of a broader effort to reform segregation-era policies with present-day values of equity and opportunity.
Hampton University President Darrell Williams said at Monday’s Senate Higher Education Subcommittee meeting that it’s common for a state to have more than one land-grant institution. Alabama, for example, has Alabama A&M, Auburn, and Tuskegee universities.
Hampton received designated federal funding for 48 years, from 1872 to 1920, which ceased afterwards. Now its leaders and some lawmakers are trying to fix that.
If successful, Senate Bill 274 would restore Hampton as a land-grant university. The bill, carried by Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, would also establish a special fund to support this restoration.
“We have been promoting this cause for the last two to three years, because we think it’s fair and just,” Williams said on Monday.
The legislation defines the types of funding and programs Hampton may join under this status and assigns the university community service, education, and research responsibilities to benefit the public and the commonwealth.
Importantly, Hampton would also rejoin a short list of land-grant institutions in the commonwealth. The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 created Virginia Tech to develop colleges in agriculture, engineering, and mechanics, with proceeds from federal land sales funding these efforts. The U.S. seized much of that land from Native American communities.
Because most Virginia colleges barred Black students at the time, leaders created the Second Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1890, which enabled the founding of historically Black institutions such as Virginia State University. Virginia Tech admitted its first Black students in 1953.
Locke said the proposal would not affect or reduce funding for Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, a concern raised among the subcommittee.
“Senate Bill 274 is not designed to revisit the past with grievance, but to complete the historical record and align Virginia’s policies with present-day values and needs,” Locke said on Monday.
She added that the proposal “does not take away from VSU or Virginia Tech, but merely expands opportunities for Hampton reintegrating HU into the national land grant system to bolster its research and educational initiatives.”
The legislation’s chances of success are strong. It has unanimous support from the Senate’s higher education subcommittee, which Locke chairs.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, before being elected, also signaled support for Virginia’s HBCUs after federal officials in the U.S. Departments of Education and Agriculture found multiple cases of underfunding at HBCU land-grant institutions in 16 states, including Virginia State University, in 2023.
The measure must clear the Democrat-controlled General Assembly before it reaches the governor for consideration.