Bomb-threatened Black schools eligible for security grants

WASHINGTON — Historically Black colleges and universities victimized by recent bomb threats can apply for federal grants under a program designed to help improve campus security and provide mental health resources, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Wednesday. Harris said more than 80 anonymous bomb threats against historically Black colleges and universities and churches, as well as synagogues and other faith-based and academic institutions, had “brought fear and anxiety to places of peace.” “They have caused classes to be canceled, dorms to be locked down and communities of faith to be kept apart,” she said at a White House event. The vice president said historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, where the learning was disrupted by the bomb threats are now eligible for Project School Emergency Response to Violence program grants through the U.S. Education Department. Harris said the shootings were a reminder of the “terrible cost of violence, xenophobia and hate.” Dietra Trent, executive director of the White House initiative on historically Black colleges and universities, said the threats, particularly during Black History Month, were “uniquely traumatic” given the history of bombings as a tool of intimidation during the civil rights movement.