Author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates is partnering with two non-profits, The Courage Fund and A Long Walk Home to address sexual violence and increase prevention efforts.
The fund will help support education and healing programs, predominantly for Black women and girls, the most at risk for sexual violence and abuse. The collaborative fund will also award champions of sexual violence prevention in the United States.
A Long Walk Home, focused on sexual-violence prevention and education for two decades, will lead the effort. Coates first heard about A Long Walk Home while serving a residency at the Apollo Theater in New York City. Kamilah Forbes, executive producer of the Apollo, connected him with the Chicago-based nonprofit, which uses art to empower Black women and girls who have survived violence.
Scheherazade Tillet, co-founder, says Coates came to her with the idea of honoring people like Edwards. Her organization brought into the fund longtime partner A Call to Men, which educates and trains boys and men to oppose violence against women.
“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 says.
The Courage Fund’s first grant comes from the Ford Foundation, who announced a $1 million donation on Dec. 13. Coates, along with singer John Legend and Sacramento Kings Harrison Barnes, have also pledged to contribute to the fund.
“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 survivors.”
Coates will serve as an adviser to the fund. He said he was inspired to create it after seeing women come forward to testify during singer R. Kelly’s 2021 trial.
Black women and girls are disproportionately at risk of sexual violence in America. Almost 1 in 5 Black women are survivors of rape, and over 40% experience some form of of sexual misconduct.
Moreover, for every Black woman who reports sexual violence, at least 15 do not.
Tillet says it’s been “significant to have support from a well-known figure like Coates,” the Howard alum, and recipient of the 2015 National Book Award, to bring awareness to an often underserved subject.
Coates projects the fund to raise $10 million over the next two years.
