Land Grant Universities and NC State Land

NC State University sits on land with historical ties to people from the Saponi, Tutelo, and Tuscarora nations. In 1663 King Charles II of England laid claim to the land that stretches from present day North Carolina down to Georgia and west to the Pacific Ocean. While it was known this was the land of Native peoples, the English believed they only needed to occupy the land and build traditional markers of English occupation, like fences and planted gardens, to have a legitimate claim to land. The original English Charter granted land “in the parts of America not yet cultivated or planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people, who have no knowledge of Almighty God.”

Legislation passed before NC State’s founding laid the groundwork for the university. The Morrill Act, passed in 1862, gave states land to sell and instructed states to use the proceeds to fund endowments for public institutions to educate future engineers and farmers. Justin Smith Morrill, a Whig congressman, proposed the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as a way to provide professional, academic training that would lead to the expansion of science and technology in the United States.The land sold was Native land, taken from indigenous people through treaty, sale, and theft by the federal government. As historian Margaret A. Nash notes, land grant universities exist due to “the state-sponsored system of Native dispossession.”

Congress gave each state 30,000 acres of land per congressperson. North Carolina had claim to almost 270,000 acres of land through the Morrill Act. These were located across ten states: California (211,568 acres), Kansas (13,208 acres), Minnesota (13,137 acres), Oregon (10,700 acres), Colorado (9,795 acres), Iowa (5,747 acres), Missouri (4,383 acres), Washington (800 acres), Nebraska (480 acres), and Wisconsin (160 acres). Historian Judy Kertész has been leading research on North Carolina’s land grants. She found that the land parcels sold to raise funds for North Carolina’s land grant university were once home to over 100 different tribes and nations including “the Osage, Kaw, Sac, Meskwaki, Iowa, Omaha, Missouri, Otoe, Santee Dakota, Pawnee, Ojibwe, Miwok, Yokut, Mono, Lusieño, Cahuilla, Kumeyaay, Kalapuya, Dwamish, Suquamish, Snoqualmie, Stillaguamish, Skagit, Swinomish, Sauk-Suiattle, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Coos, Umpqua, and Sisuslaw.”

The state gave the funds to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but—as the founders of NC State pointed out—they did not offer classes in agriculture. In 1887 the NC General Assembly established the North Carolina College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts, now North Carolina State University, to fill that need as a land-grant institution, but the original land grant funds stayed at UNC Chapel Hill. The first land for NC State’s campus was a farm owned by Eason Lee. Raleigh developer Richard Stanhope Pullen bought Eason Lee’s farm in 1887 and cut the land in half. He donated half of the land to the North Carolina College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts and the other half became Pullen Park.

North Carolina has two land-grant universities. In 1890, Congress passed the second Morrill Act, which targeted former Confederate states who would not allow African Americans to attend their land-grant universities. According to John Michael Lee, Jr.,the 1890 Morrill Act “prohibited the distribution of money to states that made distinctions of race in admissions unless at least one land-grant college for African Americans was established.” The work of historian Bea Wilson in “The Tale of Two Morrill Acts,” shows that 19 historically Black land-grant institutions were created as a result of the second Morrill Act.

The passage of this law required the then North Carolina College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts, now North Carolina State University, to offer courses to African American students. To continue to receive funding, NC State partnered with Shaw University in Raleigh, with NC State instructors teaching technical courses to Shaw University’s African American students. They offered courses in agriculture, English, horticulture and mathematics. The “temporary arrangement” involved four teachers from North Carolina State University and 37 students from Shaw University.

This arrangement lasted one year until the state of North Carolina established the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race, now named North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Once this additional land grant college was established, government funds were then divided “in proportion to total population” between the two universities, with 30% going to NC A&T and 70% going to NC State. Today, North Carolina A&T is the largest HBCU in the nation.

NC State’s campus has grown substantially over the last 134 years. The school started with the sixty acres of farmland donated by Richard Stanhope Pullen. Today, North Carolina State University has 2,137 acres. Over the years, NCSU has added new campuses, like Centennial Campus and the Centennial Biomedical Campus. NC State established Centennial Campus to accommodate its expanding student body, eventually adding over 1,000 acres of land to NC State.

The Occaneechi Band of Saponi, Saponny, Haliwa-Saponi, and Coharie, descendents of the original stewards of NC State’s land, are contemporary tribes based within an hour from NC State’s campus.

References

Original Source References

Cross, Jerry L. “Pullen, Richard Stanhope.” NCpedia. Accessed December 9, 2019. https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/pullen-richard-stanhope.

“History and Tradition - NC State University.” NC State History and Tradition Comments. Accessed December 10, 2019. https://www.ncsu.edu/about/history-and-tradition/.

Hudson, Charles M. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.

Lockmiller, David A. History of North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering of the University of North Carolina, 1889-1939. LD3928.L6 1939, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, https://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/LD3928-L6-1939#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-2369%2C0%2C8316%2C4920. 

“NativeLand.ca.” Native. Accessed January 19, 2020. https://native-land.ca/.

North Carolina State University, Office of Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, 1887-2013, UA003.001, Carton 212. Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua003_001/summary.

North Carolina State University Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes, 1887-2018, UA001.001, Card boxes 17, 18. Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua001_001/summary.

Reagan, Alice E. North Carolina State University, A Narrative History. Raleigh: North Carolina State University Foundation and North Carolina State University Alumni Association, 1987.

The Ira Obed Schaub Collection, 1855 - 1974 (MC00021), Special Collections Research Center at NC State University Libraries, 

https://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/ll000396#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-2181%2C-464%2C9344%2C9253

“Sustainable Land Use and Grounds: NC State University.” Sustainability. Accessed December 9, 2019. https://sustainability.ncsu.edu/campus/land-use/.

Secondary Source References

Almeroth-Williams, Tom. “The Great University Land-Grab.” University of Cambridge, Accessed April 10, 2020. https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/great-university-land-grab.

Bluford Library at North Carolina A&T State University, “A & T History,” North Carolina A&T University, Accessed February 22, 2021, http://www.library.ncat.edu/resources/archives/history.html

Carson, Dean W. “Richard Stanhope Pullen and Raleigh’s First Public Park, 1887-1920,” The North Carolina Historical Review 75, no. 2 (1998): 168.

Cross, Coy F. Justin Smith Morrill: Father of the Land-Grant Colleges. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999.

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne.  An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.

Kertész, Judy, Samantha Aamot, Kyle Bailey, Kelli Pryor, and Corinne Foster, “NC State University’s Land Grabs: The History of the Morrill Act of 1862 at North Carolina State University,” publication forthcoming.

Lee, Jr., John Michael. “Land-Grant But Unequal: State One-to-One Match Funding for 1890 Land-Grant Universities,” The Office for Access & Success Policy Brief, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, September 2013, https://www.aplu.org/library/land-grant-but-unequal-state-one-to-one-match-funding-for-1890-land-grant-universities/file#:~:text=The%20Morrill%20Act%20of%201890%20prohibited%20the%20distribution%20of%20money,al.%2C%202004%3B%20Redd%2C

Lee, Robert, Tristan Ahtone, Margaret Pearce, Kalen Goodluck, Geoff McGhee, Cody Leff, Katherine Lanpher, and Taryn Salinas. “North Carolina State University.” Land-Grab Universities, High Country News, Accessed February 20, 2021, https://www.landgrabu.org/universities/north-carolina-state-university.

Nash, Margaret A.  "Entangled Pasts: Land-Grant Colleges and American Indian Dispossession," History of Education Quarterly 59, no. 4 (2019): 437. doi:10.1017/heq.2019.31.

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, “A&T History,” Accessed February 22, 2021, https://ncat.edu/about/history-and-traditions/index.php.

Sorber, Nathan M. Land-Grant Colleges and Popular Revolt: the Origins of the Morrill Act and the Reform of Higher Education. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.

Wilson, Bea. “The Tale of Two Morrill Acts: 1890 Historically Black Land-Grant Universities,” AgDaily, October 22, 2020,  https://www.agdaily.com/insights/tale-of-two-morrill-acts-1890-historically-black-land-grant-universities/