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. Some education leaders call it a form of reparations, the old "40 acres and a mule" but for the ivy covered campuses of some of the nation's oldest colleges. Others prefer the softer term "arrears" to describe the push for more money from state coffers.  Either way, billions of dollars — at least $1.1 billion so far — is at stake for up to 50 colleges that educate hundreds of thousands of Black students annually.