Vice President Kamala Harris announced grant funds on Wednesday to aid over a third of historically Black colleges and universities that have had bomb scares since early January, including repeated threats.

Harris, who is a Howard University alumna and first graduate of an HBCU to become the vice president of the United States, delivered the remarks at a White House event on public safety.

"We gather united against violence and against intimidation," Harris said. "Every American should be able to learn, work, worship and gather without fear. It is our duty to do everything we can to protect all our communities. Harm against any one of our communities is a harm against all of us."

More than 80 anonymous bomb threats have been issued against dozens of majority-Black faith and educational institutions, Harris said.

"These threats have brought fear and anxiety to places of peace," she added.

The grant funds will come from the U.S. Department of Education's Project School Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV) program, a White House statement on the event said.

HBCUs that have received disruptive bomb threats can use the money to hire mental health professionals, enhance campus security and provide specialized training to security staff, Harris continued.

Project SERV provides limited short-term funding to schools that have experienced traumatic incidents to assist in restoring a safe environment conducive to learning, according to the education department's statement on the grant funds for the impacted HBCUs.

Typical awards under the program range from $50,000 to $150,000 per school.

No explosive devices have been found, but the recent and repeated bomb threats have disrupted learning, diverted critical resources to emergency responses and increased burden on campus mental health systems, according to the White House statement.

HBCUs were founded to educate Black people in the Jim Crow era, when Black people were terrorized by White supremacist mob lynching incidents, especially in the South, and refused entry into other colleges due to racial discrimination.

Credit :- UPI.com