Three Black Scholars Named Fletcher Fellows

In 2004 Alphonse Fletcher Jr., CEO of the Wall Street firm Fletcher Asset Management, established a $50 million endowment that funds the research of scholars, writers, and artists whose work contributes to improving race relations in the United States. Scholars selected as Fletcher Fellows receive a stipend of $50,000. Since 2004, 36 scholars have received Fletcher Fellowships. Among the winners have been Elizabeth Alexander, Anita Hill, Arthur Mitchell, Randall Kennedy, Brent Staples, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Clayborne Carson.

This year three academics were chosen from 80 applicants to receive Fletcher Fellowships:

Mia Bay is an associate professor of history and director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Professor Bay, who earned her Ph.D. in history at Yale University, spent the 2009-2010 academic year as a senior fellow at the National Humanities Center. She will use her fellowship stipend to complete work on her project entitled “Traveling Black: A Social History of Segregated Transportation.”

Richard Thompson Ford is George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He is the author of the 2008 book The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. His fellowship project will involve research on subtle forms of racism and discrimination in education and employment.

Professor Ford is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

Tyrone Forman is an associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Race and Difference Initiative at Emory University in Atlanta. His research will involve racial interaction of American youth. A graduate of Vassar College, Dr. Forman earned a master’s degree at Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan.