The 2019 MacArthur Foundation Grant included five Black recipients among the 26 winners.
The award is given to individuals who come up with creative ways to solve issues within society and set the foundation for a better future.
This year's winners will each receive $625,000 over five years.
Emmanuel Pratt, 42, received the award for his work as the executive director of Sweet Water Foundation, an organization on the South Side of Chicago which transforms abandoned buildings into a sustainable farm and cultural center. Pratt also established the Sweet Water Academy Immersions program, which gives the community a chance to assist in the project.
College students and faculty took part in the two-week SWA Immersion program which took place this past summer, learning about architecture and urban development by working together with the SWF team.
According to the New York Times, Pratt said he would use the fellowship to cover salaries and to help the group’s planned expansion into housing.
“I don’t do the work to get recognition,” Pratt told The New York Times. “I do it because it’s a way of life. It’s proving that it’s not just possible, but that another way is already happening. It’s right here.”
Kelly Lytle Hernandez, 45, is a historian at UCLA who documents the history of incarceration and immigrant detention practices in the United States.
“I hope the fellowship provides an even larger umbrella for myself and other scholars who are doing this kind of movement-driven scholarship to have more flexibility, to have more — you almost want to say credentials,” Hernandez told the New York Times.
Hernandez has written several books, including the awarding-winning Conquest, Rebellion and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles. According to the Organization of American Historians, Hernandez also leads the Million Dollar Hoods project, which investigates the amount of money spent on incarceration per neighborhood in Los Angeles County.
Saidiya Hartman studies the impact of slavery in America today and documents stories that have been systematically left out of historical archives. Hartman is the author of Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America.
Walter Hood was recognized for his work in creating an ecologically sustainable urban area to improve the lives of current residents. According to the MacArthur Foundation's website, Hood designed Lafayette Square Park in Oakland in 1999 and Splash Pad Park in 2003.
Hood also created an oasis among busy roadways to give pedestrian access between neighborhoods.
According to Berkeley News, Hood is now designing “ancestral gardens” for the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. The project symbolizes the place where slaves gathered secretly to pray and practice their traditions.
Cameron Rowland, 30, who prefers to maintain a low-profile and thus isn't pictured, is among the youngest award winners. Rowland won the award as a conceptual artist who displays physical objects made by prison labor to illustrate racism in the prison system.
