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Author, educator, journalist and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates has recently partnered up with two nonprofit organizations aimed at servicing victims of sexual violence, especially Black women and girls. According to the Associated Press, Coates created and will serve as an adviser for the Courage Fund, which received its first grant from the Ford Foundation, which announced the $1 million donation in mid-December last year.
From AP:
Coates, along with singer John Legend and Sacramento Kings basketball player Harrison Barnes, have also pledged to contribute to the fund. A Long Walk Home and A Call to Men, national organizations focused on sexual-violence prevention and education for two decades, will lead the effort.
Coates, who will serve as an adviser to the fund, said he was inspired to create it after seeing women come forward to testify about sexual abuse during singer R. Kelly’s 2021 trial. Kelly was jailed for 30 years after being found guilty of eight counts of sex trafficking in a New York court.
Despite the fact that allegations of sexual abuse against young women and girls have followed Kelly around throughout the majority of his career, there are still those who cape for the Pied Predator and insist he’s a victim of a racist justice system—as if it didn’t take the better part of three decades for him to be brought to justice. (Also, the vast majority of his accusers were Black, so…) It’s good to see Black men like Coates advocate for the most vulnerable in our community and those who are often overlooked in so-called pro-Black activism.
“My own consciousness was awakened by the courage of Stephanie ‘Sparkle’ Edwards, who, in her lonely quest to end R. Kelly’s decades of abuse, lost friends, family, and a career,” Coates said in a statement. “I wanted to conceive of the Courage Award, which will honor whistleblowers who have risked everything to break this cycle of violence in our community and to support programs for underserved girls and women who are survivors of sexual abuse.”
Scheherazade Tillet, co-founder of A Long Walk Home, said Coates approached her organization and pitched the idea for his fund to honor victims like Edwards who put themselves at risk in order to do what was right. She then took the idea to A Call to Men, “which educates and trains boys and men to oppose violence against women,” according to AP. Tillet said her organization has joined forces with A Call to Men numerous times in the past.
“We’ve been partnering up for many years and wanting to do more and more work with them to really make sure that men were also part of the solutions with us,” Tillet said.
Tillet also said that partnering with high-profile figures like Coates goes a long way in terms of funding and support.
“I think that helped us get the Ford Foundation funding, that helps us be able to get into certain spaces around these topics that maybe people might have felt apprehensive around,” she said.
As for the College Fund, Coates’ initiative plans to present awards of at least $250,000 every other year to advocates and survivors speaking out against sexual violence. The fund, which is based in Chicago with plans to go nationwide, “will also run public awareness campaigns and operate programs in nail salons, barber shops, and other nontraditional places to educate people about sexual assault,” AP reported.
Shout out to Coates and everyone else in the fight against sexual abuse.
