A new scholarship program in honor of former U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young is being created to assist students who attend accredited historically Black colleges and universities and complete a civil rights curriculum. State Reps. Mack Jackson, D-Sandersville, and Dave Belton, R-Buckhead, will announce the bipartisan Andrew Young HBCU Scholarship Program Friday during a press conference in the South Wing of the State Capitol.
Jackson and Belton will be joined by Young, Dean of the House Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, and a bipartisan group of state legislators. Tommy Dortch, chairman of 100 Black Men of America; Sean Ryan, President of McGraw Hill’s School; and Dr. Matt Daniels, Good of All; will also be in attendance.
During the 2022 legislative session, Jackson and Belton led the unanimous passage of House Resolution 881, which encourages public schools to study the Civil Rights Movement with a particular focus on the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Since the session ended, they have been working with Good of All and McGraw Hill to create this scholarship program. Students who attend accredited historically Black colleges and universities and also complete Good of All’s Civil Rights Movement curriculum will be eligible for the scholarship.
With funding from McGraw Hill, 10 scholarship recipients will each receive $5,000 for their first year of attendance. The scholarship organizers plan to expand both the award amount and number of scholarships in the future.
HR 881 states: “It is vital to the future of our constitutional republic that we build empathy in our students by inspiring them to think and talk about why and how to pursue the greater good of universal civil rights; and a curriculum for the study of the Civil Rights Era could serve to educate students about the natural law and natural rights principles that informed the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the civil rights movement and the tactics and strategies of nonviolent resistance that he championed in response to such Jim Crow laws; to educate students about the Civil Rights Era and the universal lesson that hatred on the basis of immutable characteristics such as race, sex, or ethnicity or other characteristics such as nationality, religious belief, or disability can overtake any nation or society and lead to profound injustice; and to reinforce such lessons, a curriculum is needed for studying the events of the Civil Rights Era and other acts of discriminatory injustice around the world.”
The legislation also recommends that each public school in Georgia is encouraged to include in its curriculum the study of the events of the Civil Rights Era; the natural law and natural rights principles that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. drew from.
