Last week, the Underground Railroad Education Center (UREC) in Albany, New York, filed a lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Humanities, accusing it of cancelling a $250,000 grant on the basis of race. The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York by a group of lawyers affiliated with the organization Lawyers for Good Government, according to an NBC News report.
The canceled grant, the suit states, is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to cut support for any initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. This, according to the UREC lawsuit, is a violation of the organization’s First and Fifth Amendment rights. The center was informed of the cancelation in May of last year, and told that there would be no opportunity to appeal the decision.
The center was founded in 2003 by Paul and Mary Elizabeth Stewart. It is located in a red brick Greek Revival townhouse in the Arbor Hill neighborhood of Albany. Stephen Myers, a freed slave, and his wife Harriet lived in the house in the mid-19th century and utilized it as a meeting point for Underground Railroad activity in the area for decades. The UREC planned to use the quarter-million dollar grant toward construction of an interpretive center adjacent to the Myers House, according to the Times-Union.
Paul Stewart told the Times-Union that the UREC has “done all the things that one might need to do to get this project shovel-ready. If the balance of funds we needed dropped out of the sky, we’d start tomorrow.”
