Underground Railroad museum says Trump administration cut funds over race

An Underground Railroad museum in Albany, N.Y., is suing the Trump administration over a federal grant that it says was canceled on the basis of race, arguing that the president’s broad anti-diversity crusade violates constitutional protections against discrimination.

Lawyers for the Underground Railroad Education Center filed the lawsuit Friday afternoon in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of New York, alleging that the National Endowment for the Humanities withheld a $250,000 grant in violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The suit seeks reinstatement of the funds.

The administration “systematically targeted grantees and programs that sought to increase the public’s understanding of Black history and cultures,” lawyer Nina Loewenstein wrote in the 40-page brief, citing a long list of museums and cultural centers around the country that lost funding last year after Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Loewenstein added that “numerous statements of the current Executive Branch leadership reflect overt and coded racism supporting white supremacy and denigrating Black history in America.” She and other lawyers filed the suit through Lawyers for Good Government, an organization that provides free legal services for public interest cases.

Trump administration officials have argued that they are seeking to remove “divisive narratives” from public spaces and end programs that favor a particular race or minority group. The White House did not immediately provide comment.

Many lawsuits have been filed around the country challenging the actions of Trump and his U.S. DOGE Service, including over the cancellation of more than $100 million in NEH grants last year and over forced changes at historic or cultural sites to remove references to slavery or oppression. Several groups have succeeded in those suits, such as when a federal judge last month ordered the National Park Service to reinstate panels describing a history of enslavement at a site in Philadelphia where George Washington lived as president.

While some suits have been based on the notion that changes violated due process or free speech, recent challenges have increasingly argued that the Trump administration’s actions are aimed directly at race.

The Albany case involves a museum and community center that highlights pre-Civil War efforts to free enslaved people via the Underground Railroad. The center is planning a $12 million expansion, including new facilities to house more services and programs, and the NEH grant won in 2023 was a key achievement that unlocked overall fundraising efforts, the founders said.

“It signals to the world … that this is an organization worth paying attention to,” said Mary Liz Stewart, who created the center with her husband, Paul, in 2004.

She had been a fifth grade teacher researching Albany history for a class lesson when she discovered a rich, forgotten connection to the Underground Railroad. According to her and her husband’s findings, a Black couple named Stephen and Harriet Myers were abolitionists who worked for decades before the Civil War to help thousands of people escape from slavery and into freedom.

The Stewarts bought a brick townhouse where the Myerses lived in the 1850s and turned it into the Underground Railroad Education Center. The center offers tours and activities in the Arbor Hill neighborhood, a historically Black section of Albany. Their aim, the Stewarts said, is to share “empowering and uplifting stories” about local history.