By Melanie Eversley
At least 10 Black scholars or artists are among the class of 21 “genius grant” recipients.
The MacArthur Foundation, based in Chicago, announced the 25 winners of its annual fellowship this week. Winners receive $625,000 distributed over five years to help them pursue their own “artistic, intellectual, and professional activities in the absence of specific obligations or reporting requirements,” according to the foundation.
Among them are painter Jordan Casteel, a Harlem resident who brings to life the people and scenes of New York, Ibram Kendi, an historian based at Boston University advancing the global conversation around racism, choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of the Urban Bush Women dance troupe, biological physicist Ibrahim Cissi, whose development of microscopy tools to investigate subcellular processes underlying gene regulation will help pinpoint the root causes of disease, and Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet and lawyer based in New Haven, Conn., who advocates for the incarcerated.
Winners enter the program after being nominated by someone else.
