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Associated Press
14 hours ago
- General
- Associated Press
Foundations donate $1.5M to help restore historic Black church in Memphis gutted by arson
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Several foundations have donated $1.5 million to help rebuild after arson gutted a historic Black church in Memphis, Tennessee, that played an important role in the civil rights movement. Clayborn Temple had been undergoing a yearslong renovation when someone intentionally set a fire inside the church in the early hours of April 28, destroying almost everything but parts of the facade. Before the fire, the Romanesque revival church was in the midst of a $25 million restoration project that included restoring a 3,000-pipe grand organ. The project also sought to help revitalize the neighborhood with a museum, cultural programing and community outreach. Despite the extensive damage, Anasa Troutman, executive director of Historic Clayborn Temple, has said they plan to continue moving forward with the restoration. Troutman announced the new donations for that effort Wednesday. The money comes from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund along with the Mellon and Ford foundations. Located just south of the iconic Beale Street, Clayborn Temple was built in 1892 as the Second Presbyterian Church and originally served an all-white congregation. In 1949, the building was sold to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation and given its current name. In 1968, the church served as the headquarters for a sanitation workers' strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, where he was assassinated.
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Clayborn Temple will be rebuilt, director says; New $1.5 million grant to jump start it
Clayborn Temple will be rebuilt. That was the message on May 28 as hundreds of people — civil rights leaders, Memphis officials, nonprofit directors, tourists and residents — stood before the skeleton of Clayborn Temple. Significant parts of the church burned down in a fire in the early morning of April 28. "For me, this is personal," Memphis Mayor Paul Young said. "I love Memphis to the bottom, like to my core. I love this city. This structure embolizes who we are as a community. And it's really, really, really important that we make sure that we come together and make sure that we turn this into a showcase — a space where a tragedy occurred, but we rise from that tragedy greater than we were before." The sentiment was echoed by Memphis City Council Chairman Ford Canale. It was one echoed by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen. It was one echoed by Martin Luther King III, the son of the famed civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was killed in Memphis in 1968. "I can't wait to be back when this masterpiece is done, erected and dedicated once again to stand as a shining light — a shining example — a place of love, a place of bringing people together," King said Wednesday after noting how much of "a daunting task" returning to the city his father was assassinated in can be. And rebuilding Clayborn Temple was the entire message delivered by Brent Leggs — the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund — who put action to the tune of a $1.5 million grant behind his words. The grant is backed by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. Design work has already begun for the rebuild, according to Anasa Troutman, the executive director for Clayborn Temple and The BIG We. Though an exact path is not yet clear, she said the new design will incorporate parts of the temple that are left standing. But, aside from that, she said she sees the "possibility" in rebuilding. "Today, collectively as a community, we are turning toward the future. We are going to put away our grief for a few minutes. We might cry tomorrow. We might cry next week. But today, while we're together, we are going to rejoice in the beauty and the power and the possibility of what remains behind us. Clayborn Temple has been damaged, but it has not been destroyed," Troutman told the crowd. After speaking, Troutman told The Commercial Appeal that, despite the process "starting from scratch" in terms of the design plans, they are not "starting from zero" in terms of funding. She said funds gathered from the organization's initial push to reconstruct Clayborn Temple are able to be used for the new rebuild. There is not yet a timeline for the rebuild, but people who wish to donate to fund the new project can do so online at or by emailing rebuild@ Much of Clayborn Temple burned to the ground on April 28. The Memphis Fire Fighters Association, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, said the call came early in the morning, and that firefighters were able to get much of the fire put out within an hour of arriving on the scene. Though much of the fire was put out within that timeframe, crews could be seen suppressing the fire around 7 a.m. that day. The building was left a husk of its former self. On May 1, parts of the remaining church collapsed from strong winds and severe storm conditions. A joint investigation between the Memphis Fire Department and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was opened on April 28. The investigation saw many surrounding streets closed. Some of those streets have remained closed since the investigation was closed on May 21. Investigators concluded the fire was "intentionally set on the interior of the historic church." It also revealed a person of interest. The Memphis Fire Department included pictures of the person, shown walking the streets near Clayborn Temple, in a social media post. An $11,000 reward is being offered by CrimeStoppers for any information that leads to an arrest. Tips can be called in to CrimeStoppers at (901) 528-2274 or the state arson hotline at 1-800-762-3017. Troutman hosted a digital press conference the day after the fire was ruled intentional. During that press conference, she said a fire had happened at her home more than two weeks prior to the Clayborn Temple fire. Another one happened near a family property in East Tennessee, a week before that. "I have spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that this is all a crazy coincidence, but it's just hard to imagine that there's not something there," Troutman said, adding that it was too early to say if the incidents were targeted. Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and and followed on X @LucasFinton. This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Clayborn Temple's post-arson rebuild starts with $1.5 million grant
Time Magazine
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
Darren Walker
In the early months of the pandemic, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker came up with an idea so radical that, he recalls, 'everyone asked me, 'You can really do that?!' Everyone.' His brainstorm: with interest rates near zero and stocks tanking, major philanthropies should issue 50-year bonds to raise money for COVID-19 relief. It would save them from having to sell assets at a moment when their value had dropped significantly. 'It was an arbitrage play, really,' he says. Ford's 'social bond,' the first in U.S. nonprofit history, raised $1 billion to buck up hundreds of flailing nonprofit grantees during the unprecedented crisis. He lobbied 14 other major philanthropies to also issue bonds but only four followed his lead initially. 'Too many operate from a culture of no as opposed to asking, How do I get to yes?' Walker says. 'I believe philanthropy should be doing the bold, risk-taking work that the government or private sector isn't willing to or cannot do.' (After seeing how successful the social bonds were, some of the leaders who had initially refused issued them too.) Walker, who will step down from Ford at the end of 2025 after 12 years in charge, has been a transformative figure. Under his direction, the $16 billion foundation, among the nation's wealthiest, turned its attention sharply to issues of social justice and inequality, with a focus on boosting educational opportunities and civil rights for people of color and those with disabilities—Walker established the first disability-rights program by a major foundation. In 2014, he chaired the committee to lead Detroit out of bankruptcy, corralling automakers, unions, and other stakeholders to strike an $816 million ' Grand Bargain '—Ford contributed $125 million—to pay off the city's debt without jeopardizing the pensions of local-government workers or selling off the city's art-museum collection. This can-do instinct comes, he says, from his own rise from poverty in rural Texas to work first as a lawyer, then an international investor, and for the past quarter-century, in the nonprofit sector. In 2006, he became vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Seven years later, he took over Ford, becoming the first out gay Black man to run a multibillion-dollar philanthropy. ' 'Philanthropy should be doing the bold, risk-taking work.' ' The perpetually sunny Walker chuckles as he considers what Henry Ford, the legendary car maker also known for his racist views, would think of someone like him leading the philanthropy that the industrialist established in 1936, then shrugs. 'Things evolve.' Walker is now often the philanthropy head others turn to for advice and perspective; he believes that's partly because he's one of the few who knows what it's like to be poor or marginalized. 'My experience and my background are unusual,' he says. 'I tend to see the world through a lens of abundance and not limitations.' While he's often lauded for his groundbreaking yet collaborative approach— winning the Council on Foundations Award for Distinguished Service in 2024—Walker regards his own record as 'mixed' largely because, in focusing so heavily on poverty and diversity, he worries he failed to notice an important national shift. 'These last few years, we've seen inequality impacting working class white Americans who were not a demographic that was a priority for philanthropy because for most of the 20th century, they were doing better,' he says. 'Now we're seeing white households with indicators of poor well-being, downward mobility, and lower life expectancy. We need to pay attention to that.' It's one of the reasons he decided to step down—so a new leader can look at the Ford Foundation's mission with new eyes. But Walker, whose longtime partner died of heart failure in 2019, also wants to look at his own life anew. His parting advice to fellow heads of philanthropies? 'It's easy to convince yourself that you're a success when you're a foundation president because people tell you you're doing a good job all the time,' Walker says. 'Don't believe that. We need to assess ourselves with some humility.' —Steve Friess
Time of India
18-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee joins Telangana Vision Board
Hyderabad: Nobel laureate Professor Abhijit Banerjee has joined the TelanganaRising Vision Board as an advisor, offering his expertise to shape the state's long-term development agenda. During his meeting with chief minister A Revanth Reddy on Saturday at the Integrated Command and Control Centre, Prof Banerjee shared his vision on inclusive economic growth , job creation, urban innovation, and skilling—core components of Telangana's future roadmap. In a wide-ranging dialogue, the two leaders discussed transformative ideas for boosting public revenue, empowering traditional artisans through modern tools, and positioning Hyderabad as a global services and innovation hub. Prof Banerjee, currently the Ford Foundation international professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ), is a globally renowned economist and co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an MIT-based research centre dedicated to reducing global poverty through scientific evidence and policy impact. In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel prize in economic sciences along with his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating poverty. Promoting traditional skills During the discussion, Prof Banerjee emphasised the importance of creating short-term, skill-based programmes that combine traditional knowledge with contemporary design sensibilities, digital marketing, and social media outreach. He also suggested that Telangana should integrate arts, crafts, and cultural creativity into the planning of the Bharat Future City, giving it a distinctive identity rooted in both innovation and heritage. According to the chief minister's office, Prof Banerjee appreciated the state govt's inclusive policies, notably the recruitment of transgender individuals into the traffic police and municipal workforce—a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country. He also welcomed the CM's vision for reimagining Hyderabad's core urban zone within the Outer Ring Road as a services-driven economic corridor, supported by dedicated skills and sports universities that would build capacity for a future-ready workforce. The CM, on the other hand, detailed the Congress govt's focused efforts to empower women's self-help groups, farmers, and the youth through a combination of welfare, credit, and enterprise support. The CM underscored the govt's goal of inclusive economic expansion, where social equity and global ambition go hand in hand—a vision Prof Banerjee is expected to contribute to through his advisory role on the Vision Board.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's All-Out Culture War Is Now Targeting Philanthropy
Remember 'a thousand points of light'? Accepting the Republican nomination for president in 1988, George H. W. Bush celebrated what he described as a bright constellation of charitable organizations, 'thousands and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary and unique.' 'This is America,' Bush said, 'The Knights of Columbus, the Grange, Hadassah, the Disabled American Veterans, the Order of Ahepa, the Business and Professional Women of America, the union hall, the Bible study group, LULAC [League of United Latin American Citizens], Holy Name, a brilliant diversity spreads like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.' Bush contrasted the creativity of these nonprofit organizations with government, which, in his view, didn't always remember that 'the people are its master,' and fell hostage to 'the imaginings of the social planners.' Private sector do-gooders, not top-down government regulators, would show us 'what's been tested and found to be true.' That was then. Today, Republican doctrine is to bleed nonprofits to bail out a federal government rendered insolvent by 44 years of irresponsible tax cuts. Poppy Bush's desire to replace government spending with private philanthropy was wrongheaded, but at least it was identifiably conservative. The GOP's defunding of philanthropy is both wrongheaded and a violation of the conservative principle that private organizations should take the lead in addressing societal needs. The House tax bill (text; section-by-section summary) increases taxes on philanthropies. It was news to me that philanthropies pay any taxes at all; I always thought nonprofit status shielded these groups entirely from taxation. That's not correct. Philanthropies were first subjected to taxation in 1969, when Congress imposed a flat tax on foundations' endowment income. Then, as now, a central motivation was Republican animus against what it deemed an overly liberal nonprofit world. Today, the Enemy is George Soros; back then it was the Ford Foundation, which took a left turn in the late 1960s under the leadership of McGeorge Bundy, former national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In signing the 1969 tax bill into law, President Richard Nixon said it 'reflected a deep and wholly legitimate concern about the role of foundations in our national life.' Two years later, in April 1971, Nixon could be heard grousing about the Ford Foundation on the White House tapes. The foundation, Nixon said, funded trips to Africa by Maine Senator Ed Muskie, then judged Nixon's likeliest Democratic opponent in 1972: I traveled for eight years by myself. I paid it all out of my own pocket…. I financed the whole goddamn thing. Did I ever hear a word from the Ford Foundation? How many foundations suggested, 'Look, Nixon, the former Vice President, is going to make this trip abroad. You're going on a non-partisan basis. We'd like to help'? No. They finance this son-of-a-bitch Muskie. Under current law, philanthropies are required to pay a flat 1.39 percent tax on their endowment income. The House bill would keep that 1.39 percent tax rate for foundations with net assets below $50 million but impose three new brackets for wealthier philanthropies. Foundations with net assets at or above $50 million but less than $250 million would pay a marginal tax of 2.78 percent; foundations with net assets at or above $250 million but less than $5 billion would pay a marginal tax of 5 percent; and foundations with net assets at or above $5 billion would pay a marginal tax of 10 percent. These higher rates would apply to 2,900 philanthropic organizations, according to the nonprofit Philanthropy Roundtable, at a total cost over the next ten years of not quite $16 billion. As the Philanthropy Roundtable points out, that $16 billion 'would otherwise support education, the arts, religious missions, medical research and local civic efforts.' One puzzling aspect of the House proposal is that it would affect conservative philanthropies as well as liberal ones. Since 1969, philanthropy has changed in three significant ways. First, it's gotten significantly more political. Second, many of these more political philanthropies are conservative (typically very conservative). Third, philanthropies are funded much more than they used to be by big-money donors, many of whom also throw a lot of money at conservative political candidates. But the wealthiest foundations still follow the old philanthropic model: mostly apolitical, focused on addressing health, the environment, poverty, and other broadly societal problems. The conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation doesn't crack the top 100; neither, as best I can tell, do any of the Koch foundations (though these operate through so many front groups it's hard to know for sure). The richest five foundations in the United States are: 1.) The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($59 billion in assets) 2.) Lilly Endowment ($40 billion) 3.) Howard Hughes Medical Institute ($24 billion) 4.) Ford Foundation ($16 billion) 5.) Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($13 billion) The tenth-richest is Soros's Foundation to Promote Open Society ($10 billion). Under the House bill, there is no conservative foundation that would have to pay the highest marginal tax of 10 percent, and very possibly none that would have to pay the second-highest maginal tax of 5 percent, either. The $16 billion that the House bill would squeeze out of philanthropy doesn't get House Republicans very far toward actually balancing the budget; as written, the House bill will more than double the deficit. The only plausible motive for the new tax brackets is a GOP culture war against not only liberals but also mainstream culture, as demonstrated by its war against federal grants to universities. University culture skews liberal, it's true, but there's nothing especially liberal about, for example, the science funding that's drying up with the Trump administration's evisceration of the National Science Foundation. There's nothing particularly liberal about any innovations that research would spawn, either, or the jobs these would create. The House bill also increases taxes on income generated by university endowments, with an even higher top marginal rate of 21 percent. That will generate an even smaller amount for the Treasury, about $7 billion over ten years. As is true in so many other ways, such Trumpian policymaking is not so much ideological as it is pathological. It certainly isn't conservative. Republican nihilism predates Trump (see my 'How the GOP Lost Its Brain,' February 2023), but the problem has gotten exponentially worse in Trump's second term. For some years now Republicans have used the very word 'mainstream' pejoratively (as in 'mainstream media'). Now even the mainstream conservatism of Bush's thousand points of light is under attack.
