This upcoming fall, three states will participate in a once-in-a-lifetime lottery that will award descendants of the trans-Atlantic slave trade a $50,000 grant.
Community activists are pushing to get people to apply, claiming many don’t believe the grant is actually real.
A hundred residents living in Minnesota, North Dakota, or South Dakota will receive the grants from a $50 million fund called the “Open Road Fund,” established by the Minnesota-based nonprofit Bush Foundation founded by the late 3M executive Archibald Bush and administered by Nexus Communications.
The grants will not serve as a form of reparations, not according to Nexus, but should be viewed as “a step in the right direction towards cultivating wealth and prosperity” for Black residents.
In addition to living in the three states, applicants must be 14 years old or older and have applied for the lottery when the application is available on July 28.
“We’re assuming it’s going to be a pretty big pool of folks from Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota,” Danielle Mkali, senior director of Nexus Community Partners, said in an interview with KARE 11.
“We’ll take that and make sure those submissions look great, and then we’ve created a tool to randomize the selection, and we’ll select 100 folks from there,” the executive continued.
From 2023 to 2031, a computer lottery will randomly select 800 recipients who are descendants of victims of the Atlantic slave trade, including the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America, and those who were repatriated to Africa. One hundred recipients will be selected for a five-figure award for the next eight years.
The lottery winners will have complete freedom in utilizing their prize money. They may choose to purchase a home, invest in a business, or pay off their college debt, among other possibilities.
According to Jennifer Woodford, president of the Rochester (Minnesota) Area Foundation, many…
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