Emory University is one of the recipients of a $5 million grant awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Michigan’s Center for Social Solutions and other institutions as part of the Foundation’s Just Futures initiative. The project creates and leverages a national network of scholars working in partnership with community-based organizations to develop racial reparation solutions. Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, AAS department chair, and associated faculty in the history department, will lead a team of scholars that also includes Vanessa Siddle Walker, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Studies, and AAS assistant professors Dr. Janeria Easley and Dr. Jessica Lynn Stewart.

History doctoral students Camille Goldmon and Aleo Pugh will support the team’s work. Goldmon’s dissertation, advised by Dr. Allen E. Tullos and Anderson, is titled “Land Retention Amongst African-American Farmers in the U.S. South.” Pugh’s dissertation, advised by Dr. Walter Rucker, Dr. Jason Ward, and Anderson, is titled “‘Leery of Being Consumed’: Working-Class Black Dissent and the Legacy of Brown.” Read more about the grant below.

The grant’s project, “Crafting Democratic Futures: Situating Colleges and Universities in Community-based Reparations Solutions” will involve community fellows as well as local organizations in a collaborative public history reckoning designed to offer tangible suggestions for community-based racial reparations solutions. The project emerges from the Center for Social Solutions’ focus on slavery and its aftermath, and is informed by three generations of humanistic scholarship and what that scholarship suggests for all seeking just futures. The Center is led by former Emory Provost Earl Lewis.

-“Recent Mellon Foundation Grants Awarded to AAS Faculty,” AAS Newsletter.