The Role of the 1890 Colleges and Universities in Research on Minority Problems

Abstract

1862 Land Grant Colleges responded to the question, What are the 1890 Land Grant Colleges and Tuskegee Institute doing in the areas of teaching, research, and economic development? in the following manner. They are graduating majors attuned to that segment of society (black, poor, and alienated) which our graduates find most difficult to relate. I propose that this image of the 1862 Land Grant College mirrors the author's criticism in the book Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times of the Land Grant College Complex [2]. The original sixteen 1890 institutions were founded as Land Grant Colleges with the understanding that they would develop educational programs with a rural focus for black people [4]. However, in almost all of the sixteen Southern border states where these colleges are located, they were, until most recently, the only state supported colleges for blacks. These institutions provide a multiplicity of services to black people residing in the rural and urban areas of their respective states. In fact, the history of black involvement in higher education, in general, and research, in particular, is the direct result of the 1890 Land Grant College Programs. The broad historical responsibilities of the 1890 colleges have had major impact on higher education and economic development. For example, it is practically impossible to find a recent Ph.D. candidate in rural sociology who matriculated at one of the 1890 Land Grant Colleges [1]. On the other hand, it is encouraging to observe that in 1972 these colleges spent over 70 percent of their Public Law 89-106 research funds on human resource studies [8]. Such expenditures by these colleges in cooperation with other innovative educational outreach efforts