Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are pieces of US legislation that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges.

The Morrill Act was first proposed by Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont in 1857 and was passed by Congress in 1859, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1861 Morrill resubmitted the act with the amendment that the proposed institutions would teach military tactics as well as engineering and agriculture. Aided by the secession of many states that did not support the plans, this reconfigured Morrill Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862.

Under the act, each eligible state received a total of 30,000 acres (121 km²) of federal land, either within or contiguous to its boundaries, for each member of congress the state had as of the census of 1860. This land, or the proceeds from its sale, was to be used toward establishing and funding the educational institutions described above. Under provision six of the Act, "No State while in a condition of rebellion or insurrection against the government of the United States shall be entitled to the benefit of this act," in reference to the recent American Civil War.

A second Morrill Act followed in 1890 aiming to include the former Confederate states in the program. This act also required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion, or else to designate a separate land-grant institution for persons of color. Among the seventy colleges and universities which eventually evolved from the Morrill Acts are several of today's Historically Black colleges and universities (indicated below with *).

With a few exceptions, nearly all of the Land-Grant Colleges are public.

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Morrill Land Grant Colleges and Universities

Note: of the 106 Land-Grant institutions, all but two (the Community College of Micronesia, and Northern Marianas College) are members of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC). The 31 tribal colleges of 1994 are represented as a system by the single membership of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.

* denotes Historically Black colleges and universities.

Source: National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges [1]

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External links