A promise, held against the public record.

MISSION

The 1890 Project exists to make a documented wrong actionable. For more than a century, the federal government required states to fund their 1890 land-grant universities on equal terms with their 1862 institutions. For decades, many states did not. In 2023, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Education put that failure in writing, notifying sixteen governors of the matching funds their states had withheld from the nation’s Black land-grant universities.

This project treats that correspondence as what it is: a public record. We document the funding history institution by institution, we lay out the legal framework that governs the obligation, and we pursue remedy through negotiation where states are willing and through the courts where they are not. The work is measured on purpose. A record is more durable than a slogan, and a documented figure is harder to answer than an argument.

The promise was made in law. The record shows it was not kept. The 1890 Project moves that record toward remedy.