Alumna Salamishah Tillet ’92 named 2021 Carnegie Fellow

Newark Academy alumna Salamishah Tillet ’92 was named a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellows Recipient for her cultural history project “In Lieu of the Law: ‘Me Too’ and the Politics of Justice.”

 

As a recipient, Tillet will receive a $200,000 grant to fund her research. The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides philanthropic support for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that addresses important and enduring issues confronting our society. The award is for a period of up to two years and its anticipated result is a book or major study. The criteria prioritize the originality and promise of the research, its potential impact on the field, and the scholar’s plans for communicating the findings to a broad audience.

 

Tillet is the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American and African Studies and Creative Writing, the director of New Arts Justice, and the associate director of the Price Institute at Rutgers University–Newark.

 

She penned “In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece and Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination” and in 2020, was awarded the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant for her book-in-progress, “All the Rage: Mississippi Goddam and the World Nina Simone Made.”

 

She is also the co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a non-profit that uses art to educate, engage and empower young people to end violence against girls and women.