It was a nutty idea to begin with, so that it’s not panning out comes as no surprise.

When Jake Ayers, now deceased, and Bennie Thompson, now in Congress, joined others in a federal lawsuit against Mississippi in 1975, the accusation was that the state was failing to provide the same support and programming at historically black universities that it provided to historically white universities.

Six years ago, Thompson and others signed off on a settlement. It’s hard enough to understand how the law can support both racial diversity in higher education and preservation of schools with near total one-race enrollment, but the Ayers settlement purports to do that.

It provides for additional state funds — $503 million — to be provided to Alcorn, Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State over a period of years. That has been done and is ongoing.

But the settlement also called for a $70 million public endowment and a $35 million private endowment to be funded, at least in part, through the efforts of the better-established fundraising staffs at other universities.

So far, the private endowment has $1 million, steered there by University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And not a dime more is in sight.

As JSU President Ronald Mason explains, the endowed fund was to provide a continuing source of revenue when annual state allocations, as they have, started diminishing. “The theory was that the private endowment would balance it,” Mason said.

The JSU leader also sees how untenable the plan is. Nothing does or doesn’t happen to other schools if they don’t help out. And there’s really no incentive for JSU, Alcorn or Valley to pitch in. If they divert money given to them into the endowment, it is shared with Valley and Alcorn State getting 28.3 percent each and Jackson State getting 43.4 percent. If they don’t divert money, each school keeps the whole check.

There’s one more requirement for the money. To share in proceeds from the endowment, each school must maintain a non-black enrollment of more than 10 percent for three years. Alcorn hit the mark, but has slipped. Jackson State and Valley haven’t come close.

So here’s where we are: In order to get money from an endowment created to settle a suit saying the state was not doing enough for historically black schools, (1) the money has to be raised and (2) the historically black schools must do more for students who are not black.

The proposition was nutty six years ago. And it’s just as nutty today.