Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders touted what she calls her commitment to supporting Arkansas’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Thursday morning at Rep. French Hill’s (R-Little Rock) second HBCU summit.
The summit was held at Arkansas Baptist College, and the theme was “Building Resilient Futures for HBCUs: Infrastructure, Innovation, and Economic Mobility.” During the event, Arkansas HBCU leaders discussed sustainability, private capital, public-private partnerships and connecting HBCU talent to the economy.
Speaking to attendees, Sanders praised Arkansas Baptist College students who have gone on to do great things, such as Civil Rights leader Rev. Joseph Crenchaw, musician Louis Jordan and educator Emeral Crosby. She said that generations of Black Arkansans have passed through the halls of Arkansas Baptist on their way to changing the world, and that’s why her administration has prioritized and will continue to prioritize investment in the state’s HBCUs.
As proof of this commitment, Sanders pointed to how she increased funding to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff by $2 million to help address underfunding and directed funds from the state’s Office of Skills Development to grow nursing programs at HBCUs. Over $1 million was earmarked for UAPB’s nursing program in May 2024 and Philander Smith University received $396,857.13 in May 2024 from a state grant that sought to train more nurses across several Arkansas higher education institutions due to a nationwide nurse shortage.
Sanders also touted the Arkansas LEARNS Act and Arkansas ACCESS as laws that will help direct more resources to areas that have not received significant investment.
“Just this week, in celebration of the three-year anniversary of the LEARNS Act, I had the opportunity to visit Murell Taylor Elementary in Jacksonville,” Sanders said. “Nearly two-thirds of the school students are low income, and thanks to the LEARNS Act, it has gone from an F rating to a B rating in just three years.”
It is not exactly clear how this applies to Arkansas HBCUs, as the LEARNS Act applies to K-12 schools.
Sanders also complimented Hill, who is co-chair of the Congressional Bipartisan HBCU Caucus, for the work he has done in supporting Arkansas HBCUs. Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), Rep. Alma Adams (D-North Carolina) and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) serve as co-chairs of the caucus. Adams was present at Thursday’s summit.
“It was thanks to his [Hill’s] work alongside Representative Adams that in 2019 President Trump signed the Future Act and directed more than a quarter billion dollars towards our nation’s HBCUs,” Sanders said. Hill was not a sponsor of that 2019 act, which established a permanent $255 million per year funding stream for HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.
Sanders signed the Arkansas ACCESS bill into law in March 2025. Her comments implying that ACCESS would do more for low-income students are at odds with what the law actually does.
The act does increase the first-year award for the Academic Challenge Scholarship, funded through the state lottery, from $1,000 to $2,000. As the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette pointed out, however, the Challenge scholarship amount would have normally increased each year as a student goes through college. The ACCESS act only increases the award for a student’s freshman year. The law also makes it easier for tenured professors to be fired; prohibits any kind of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; and prevents “professors from indoctrinating students with forced statements in support of DEI,” according to the state’s ACCESS website. The act also prevents student access to protests, requiring institutions to treat absences for protest activities as unexcused.
There are four HBCUs in Arkansas: Arkansas Baptist College, UAPB, Shorter College and Philander Smith University, though UAPB is the only one that is also a land-grant college. In 2023, Arkansas was listed by the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture as one of 16 states that have underfunded their land-grant HBCUs, leaving them to function with inadequate resources that also affect how schools make important investments. UAPB, Arkansas’s only land grant HBCU, was specifically listed as being underfunded by $330.9 million at the time.
Sanders’ remarks at the HBCU summit come one day after she brought Erika Kirk, Turning Point USA CEO and chair, to the Governor’s Mansion to announce a proclamation encouraging all Arkansas high school and college students to start a Turning Point chapter within their schools.
Kirk is the widow of far-right commentator and provocateur Charlie Kirk, who held the position Kirk currently holds before he was assassinated last September.
Charlie Kirk has made numerous anti-Black remarks, saying that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more,” as one example of the blatant racism he displayed.
Sanders stood next to Erika Wednesday as the latter said, “Don’t let anyone disenfranchise you because you’re a young man — especially a young white male man — don’t ever let anyone talk down to you.”
Wealthy white men have never been disenfranchised in the history of the U.S.
