Black colleges were denied state funding for decades. Now they're fighting back.

Historically Black colleges and universities in the U.S. have been underfunded for decades, with billions of dollars in state funding that should have gone to those schools diverted by lawmakers for other purposes, according to higher education experts. Now HBCU leaders are pushing to get the money these institutions say they are owed.College presidents and local lawmakers in states like Tennessee and Maryland have spent months poring over previous years' state budgets to calculate the funding gap, as well as discuss how to put that money to use on campus. Kamala Harris, who graduated from Howard University and who became the first woman of color to serve as vice president, also drew attention to HBCUs, said Terrell Strayhorn, director of the Center for the Study of HBCUs at Virginia Union University.As part of the effort to improve HBCUs and put them on an equal footing with other schools, a North Carolina congresswoman has proposed federal legislation that would send extra funding to 100 HBCUs. Separately, Cisco Systems in May said it will donate $100 million for tech upgrades at nearly a dozen HBCUs."HBCUs are winning right now, I think, because the narrative that's being carried forward is one that says Black folk, students, people, belong here," Strayhorn said. "That $544 million figure represents not just how much money Tennessee State did not receive from the state — it also represents how much money Tennessee State had to take out of its own reserves to fulfill the [federal] match requirements," he told CBS MoneyWatch. Love said previous state budgets show that lawmakers in the 1980s gave the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a predominantly White school, its full matching grant dollars, plus extra funding for various projects.