Lincoln University in Jefferson City was started by Black Union Army soldiers who chipped in their own pay after the Civil War. Now its students and graduates say Missouri has shortchanged the school for decades. A new lawsuit claims the state underfunded Lincoln by $361 million between 1987 and 2020, based on federal figures.

Governor Mike Kehoe and the Missouri General Assembly have the power to fix this. They can give Lincoln its fair share of state land-grant funding, now and in future budgets.

Federal law says a state must split funding fairly among its land-grant universities, based on how many full-time students and staff each one has. Lincoln became Missouri’s land-grant school for Black students in 1890, when the state refused to admit them to the University of Missouri. According to the lawsuit, the federal government paid its part, but Missouri chose not to match it.

Missouri is not alone. A 2023 federal review found that historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) with land-grant status were shorted a combined $12.6 billion across 16 states over about 30 years. Only Delaware and Ohio were found to be funding these schools fairly.

The gap shows up on campus. Herbert Kitchen, a graduate whose family has attended Lincoln for generations, remembers dorms that often had no heat or hot water in the 1980s. Don Calloway, who leads the group behind the lawsuit, blames millions of dollars in put-off repairs for some of the drop in enrollment, from about 3,400 students in 2011 to around 2,200 today.

“I am the hope and dream that my great-grandfather had when he was a slave,” Kitchen told The Associated Press.

Lincoln’s students should not have to wait years for a court ruling. Sign the petition to tell Governor Kehoe and the Missouri General Assembly to pay Lincoln University its fair share, before another generation of students pays the price.