“I was stunned,” Ruth Simmons, president of Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black college in Prairie View, Texas, said of learning that Scott was giving $50 million, the biggest gift the university had ever received. Scott made gifts to more than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities, as well as community and technical colleges and schools serving Native Americans, women, urban and rural students. The funds were delivered to Prairie View on Oct. 20, and Simmons said she had been permitted to start disbursing money immediately to students affected by the pandemic. Morgan State University, a historically Black university in Baltimore, said Scott’s gift of $40 million, the largest single private donation in its history, would double its endowment. She noted that she had seen an uptick, though not of this scale, of interest in donating to historically Black colleges in the wake of recent social justice movements.

Source: bd News24 December 17, 2020 14:15 UTC