Three blacks named MacArthur fellows for 2003 awarded $500,000 'genius grants'

Jet, Oct 27, 2003

Children's novelist/poet Angela Johnson, historian Eve Troutt Powell and young women's advocate Lateefah Simon are the African-Americans among the 24 winners recently named MacArthur Fellows for 2003, an award given annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for outstanding talents.

They each will receive the "genius grant," a $500,000, unrestricted, "no strings attached" stipend that will be distributed to each of them in quarterly installments over a five-year span.

Johnson, 42, of Kent, OH, is a writer whose award-winning works range from picture books to poetry to novels for children and young adults. Her realistic stories deal with issues faced by children and adults in the context of their families such as adoption, care of elderly family members and death. She has received critical acclaim for her novels Toning the Sweep and Heaven.

Powell, 42, of Athens, GA, is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia. Her analysis of 19th century Egypt sheds new light on the dynamics between colonial powers and colonized people. She is also the author of the book A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan.

Lateefah Simon, 26, is the executive director of the Center for Young Women's Development (CYWD) in San Francisco. She leads a distinctive and bold program to guide troubled girls with a history of drug addiction, prostitution or abuse from delinquency and poverty to healthy and productive adulthoods.

The MacArthur Fellows Program is designed to emphasize the importance of the creative individual in society. Fellows are selected for the originality and creativity of their work and the potential to do more in the future.

Nominations for the fellows are done anonymously by several hundred nominators appointed annually, which means that the winners are usually unaware that they are in the running.

This year marks the 25th year of grant-making done by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As one of the nation's largest private philanthropic foundations, MacArthur has awarded more than $3 billion in grants since operations began in 1978, and today has assets of approximately $4 billion.