The 1954 Mission welcomes the subsequent class of Luminary Award winners!
5 exemplary Black leaders in training will likely be honored on Might 17 on the digital 1954 Mission Luminary Awards. This momentous event marks the third 12 months during which the Cleveland Avenue Basis for Schooling Group, also called The CAFE Group, will award every awardee a $1 million-dollar grant.
This 12 months’s Luminaries embody Carmita Semaan, founder and CEO of Surge Institute; Alex Bernadotte, founder and CEO of Past 12; Reuben Ogbonna, government director at The Marcy Lab College; Chris Chatmon, founder and CEO of Kingmakers of Oakland; and Brittany Younger, founder and CEO of B-360. In response to The CAFE Group, they all have made an unbelievable impression on our communities.
“This 12 months we have now the honour of internet hosting the awards on the 69th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Schooling Supreme Court docket ruling,” stated Liz Thompson, 1954 co-founder and president of The CAFE Group, in a press launch. “We’re delighted to have Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and good friend Nikole Hannah-Jones kick off this 12 months’s celebration as a particular visitor.”
With particular company similar to Hannah-Jones, Academy and Grammy Award-winning artist and activist Widespread, and Helene Gayle, president of Spelman School, the upcoming awards ceremony represents how far the work has come. Might 17 signifies the milestone determination of Brown v. Board of Schooling, during which the Supreme Court docket dominated that separating youngsters in public faculties primarily based on race was unconstitutional. It sparked the top of legalized racial segregation in U.S. faculties, overruling the “separate however equal” precept set forth within the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.
“I began my journalism profession as an training reporter for the Raleigh Information & Observer protecting the majority-Black Durham Public Faculties,” stated Hannah-Jones, who’s revered for her investigative work on the 1619 Mission, per the discharge.
She added: “Throughout these years, I noticed the important impression of race and sophistication and the widespread penalties of the Brown vs. Board Supreme Court docket determination, so I perceive the important work that the 1954 Mission is doing.”
So far, the 1954 Mission has raised $35 million and granted greater than $15 million to its Luminaries. The awards are funded by way of contributions from 1954 founders Don and Liz Thompson and different donors, together with the Walton Household Basis, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Household Philanthropies, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Michael & Susan Dell Basis.
“Yearly, we proceed to be impressed by the inventive and collective genius of Black leaders in training. This 12 months, we acquired over 400 purposes from potential Luminaries throughout the nation, and we anticipate that quantity to develop over time,” stated government Don Thompson, founding father of Cleveland Avenue L.L.C.
