You can’t have political power unless you have economic power. You can’t have economic power unless you own something. — Dr. Claud Anderson
In the quiet towns of Wilberforce, Ohio, two institutions — Central State University and Wilberforce University — have stood for generations as monuments of African American intellectual resilience and historical fortitude. Founded in eras when the very idea of African American higher education was radical, both institutions have graduated engineers, entrepreneurs, theologians, and teachers who seeded entire Black communities with knowledge and leadership. Yet, in 2025, they remain financially fragile — their endowments barely grazing the thresholds needed for robust institutional health.
Meanwhile, Governor Mike DeWine just approved $600 million in state funds — sourced from Ohio’s $4.8 billion in unclaimed assets — to support the Cleveland Browns’ new domed stadium in Brook Park, an NFL franchise owned by billionaires. The Haslam Sports Group, the Browns’ owners, is contributing an additional $1.2 billion to the project, and Cuyahoga County is expected to round out the financing with another $600 million. The stadium, estimated at $2.4 billion, is framed as a jobs and tourism engine — the typical rationale for professional sports subsidies. But beneath the surface lies a deeply racialized economic pattern: Black bodies as capital, Black institutions as afterthoughts.
Let us state this plainly — $200 million in endowment funding (split between Central State and Wilberforce University) would account for just 4.17% of the $4.8 billion in unclaimed assets Ohio plans to repurpose. Yet it would transform the future of two of America’s most storied HBCUs, whose total combined endowments likely do not reach even $20 million today.
The $200 Million That Could Rebuild Black Educational Futures
An endowment is the economic engine of institutional independence. It enables faculty hiring, scholarships, research labs, infrastructure repair, and the kind of multi-generational planning that insulates a university from the unpredictable winds of politics and philanthropy.
- Central State University, Ohio’s only public HBCU, receives state support — but suffers from persistent underfunding compared to Ohio’s predominantly white public institutions.
- Wilberforce University, a private HBCU affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the first college owned and operated by African Americans, has been in survival mode for decades, enduring accreditation threats and enrollment declines — largely due to chronic financial starvation.
A $100 million endowment per institution, conservatively managed with a 5% annual drawdown, would provide each HBCU with $5 million per year in perpetuity. That’s enough to:
- Offer full-ride scholarships to dozens, if not hundreds, of students.
- Endow faculty chairs in business, STEM, and African American studies.
- Fund campus maintenance and restoration for aging facilities.
- Launch centers focused on African American policy, agriculture, or entrepreneurship.
- Reduce reliance on tuition and thus open doors to more low-income students.
In short, it would empower these institutions to build, not just survive.
Meanwhile, the Billionaire NFL Franchise Gets a Taxpayer Bailout
The Cleveland Browns’ new stadium is not just an economic development plan — it’s a public-funded monument to private wealth. Let us remember: The NFL is a tax-exempt cartel whose franchises are operated by billionaires and whose profits — through broadcast rights, luxury boxes, and merchandise — soar year after year.
The public rationale for subsidizing stadiums is that they will generate jobs, tourism, and long-term economic vitality. Yet, study after study from economists across ideological spectrums consistently shows that these promises are overstated or entirely unfounded. Most NFL stadiums create a short-term construction boom, followed by long-term debt and opportunity costs.
But perhaps more galling is this: the economic lifeblood of the NFL is disproportionately Black men. While roughly 13% of the U.S. population is Black, nearly 60% of NFL players are African American. These players, often trained in underfunded high schools, many from single-parent households and first-generation college trajectories, generate billions — yet the communities and institutions from which they originate remain underdeveloped and neglected.
It is a grotesque inversion: Black talent builds white wealth, while Black institutions remain marginal.
Black Athletes, White Wealth, and the Poverty of Institutional Ownership
The NFL, and by extension the Cleveland Browns, benefits from a system where the labor is Black, but the ownership is almost entirely white. Out of 32 NFL teams, only one have non-white principal owners: Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American who owns the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Meanwhile, no HBCU alum holds equity in any major professional sports franchise, despite HBCUs being core contributors to the American athletic pipeline that fuels leagues like the NFL and NBA.
Despite producing generations of elite athletes, coaches, and sports executives, no collective of HBCU alumni has leveraged its wealth or influence to acquire equity in a major professional sports franchise, leaving the economic rewards of Black athletic labor concentrated elsewhere.
Imagine a model where Ohio had used even half of the $600 million to create a Black Education & Sports Endowment, partially controlled by a consortium of HBCUs, Black public schools, and community development organizations. The returns from that endowment could support thousands of students, community health centers, literacy programs, and STEM labs for generations.
Instead, we see yet another example of extractive economics, where African American physical, cultural, and intellectual capital is used to build empires for others, while Black institutions — including HBCUs — remain dependent on begging, philanthropy, and hope.
Why Unclaimed Funds Should Serve The Forgotten
Ohio’s decision to redirect $1.7 billion in unclaimed funds to cover state expenditures is fiscally creative — but morally questionable. These are not “free” funds. They are monies left in dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, unclaimed insurance payouts — many of which disproportionately belong to low-income individuals who lacked the resources or knowledge to retrieve them.
Data suggests that Black Americans are disproportionately represented among unclaimed property holders — in part due to higher levels of economic displacement, address changes, and financial exclusion. Redirecting these funds to subsidize an NFL franchise, instead of redressing the institutional and educational gaps that created that unclaimed status, is a betrayal.
Ohio could have:
- Created a permanent Black Higher Education Trust, benefiting Central State and Wilberforce.
- Used 5% of unclaimed funds — about $240 million — to fund Black-led public health initiatives in underserved areas.
- Directed even 1% of those funds — roughly $48 million — to finance land acquisition and economic development for Black-owned businesses.
Instead, we’ve chosen to rescue billionaires from spending their own money.
HBCU Endowments Are An Economic Empowerment Issue — And the Gateway to Political Power
Endowments are more than just financial assets. They are strategic tools of power — insulating institutions from political winds, enabling bold experimentation, and giving their stakeholders the leverage to influence policy, not just plead for it.
For African America, the chronic undercapitalization of HBCUs is not merely a funding gap — it is an economic power vacuum that undercuts the entire community’s ability to advocate effectively for systemic redress.
While Williams College and Bowdoin College — small liberal arts schools with fewer than 2,500 students — boast endowments of $3.7 billion and $2.58 billion respectively, many HBCUs operate with endowments under $50 million, and some under $10 million. This discrepancy is not accidental. It is the compounding result of centuries of exclusion from generational wealth accumulation, philanthropic networks, and public investment.
Until African American institutions — especially HBCUs — are armed with independent and sizable capital, they will remain vulnerable to the whims of legislatures, accreditation bodies, and philanthropic trends. Worse, they will lack the institutional might to challenge inequity in courtrooms, boardrooms, and ballot boxes.
The fight for reparations, education equity, health justice, and fair housing requires leverage — and leverage requires capital. Political power without economic power is temporary and transactional. But economic power institutionalized through endowments can translate into permanent seats at the table, not just access to it.
Endowing HBCUs, then, is not a charitable gesture. It is a foundational strategy for African American sovereignty and redress. Without institutions that are capable of outlasting election cycles and media trends, African America will continue fighting uphill with borrowed tools and limited voice.
Ohio had a chance to fund that future. Instead, it chose to subsidize a stadium — once again reminding us: until we build our own institutions, we will always be asked to cheer from the stands while others profit from our play.merican educational infrastructure for the next 100 years. Instead, he invested in a stadium with a 20-year shelf life.
Choose the Future You Fund
In 2029, a new domed stadium will open in Brook Park. It will gleam with LED lights and imported steel. It will be filled with cheering fans on Sundays and concerts on Saturdays. The Browns may even win a playoff game or two.
But just 50 miles away, on the campuses of Wilberforce and Central State, students will still walk cracked sidewalks. Professors will still work on contracts. Students will still withdraw for financial reasons.
Unless Ohio chooses to invest in the institutions that nurture and protect Black futures, those futures will continue to be harvested but never planted.
This is not just about football. It is about the future of Black Ohio. And whether our institutions will ever be allowed to rise beyond survival — and into sovereignty.
Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.
HBCU Money 