The abolitionist, statesman and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass said that denying a person an education means adding another link in the chain of their servitude.

Whenever I hear the ahistorical question of whether we still need historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), I think of Douglass, as well as the permanency of income equality, housing segregation, and inadequate funding for black colleges, and I realize how entrenched are the efforts to keep black people in bondage.

[W] hen one compares the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill’s $15,700 in state funding per student to [HBCU] North Carolina A&T University’s $7,800 in state funding per student, inequities in funding per student are revealed.

A rash of HBCUs have closed in the last 30 years due to inequitable funding and financial management struggles, which are related to several universities’ struggles to maintain their academic accreditation.

In an op-ed published on Inside Higher Ed, Alvin Schexnider, former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University, cited almost a dozen that have closed permanently since Brown vs. the Board of Education was decided in 1954, and several that have had trouble keeping accreditation since.

Read the full article on historically black colleges and universities by Andre Perry at The Hechinger Report