Ta-Nehisi Coates, national correspondent at The Atlantic, author, blogger and educator, has been selected as the winner of the 2015 Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice. Coates receives the Stowe Prize for his writing and columns for The Atlantic, consistently and thoughtfully examining a range of cultural, social and political issues, including America's ambivalence on race and calling for a national conversation to address the impact of long-standing racial inequities.
"It is a tremendous honor to be selected as the 2015 Stowe Prize recipient," said Coates. "More than a personal accomplishment, it is a powerful affirmation of the power of writing to enlighten and hopefully influence society for the better."
Coates's feature articles and blog cover a wide range of contemporary issues - politics, race, culture, history, sports and music - and include the June 2014 Atlantic cover story, "The Case for Reparations," arguing for more than compensation for past injustices, but for "...a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal," an opportunity for Americans to reexamine attitudes toward human rights, equality and opportunity.
Coates' essay humanizes the impact of state supported institutional racism by telling the stories of people affected by blatantly racist housing and employment policies, and proposes a thoughtful strategy for action to address these gross inequities. The essay broke a single-day traffic record for a magazine story on The Atlantic's website, and in its wake, Politico named Coates to its list of 50 thinkers changing American politics. The story won a Sidney Award for best magazine essays of 2014 given by New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Coates is the third recipient of the Stowe Prize, following Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in 2011 for Half the Sky and Michelle Alexander in 2013 winner for The New Jim Crow. It is awarded biennially to a United States author whose written work makes an impact on a critical social issue in the tradition of Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe's bestselling novel changed how Americans thought about slavery in the mid 1800s, galvanizing the antislavery movement before the Civil War and creating an international outcry for abolition in the United States. Today, the Stowe Center uses Stowe's story to link history and contemporary issues and inspire positive change.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, a museum, program center and research library, is located at 77 Forest Street in Hartford, CT. The Stowe Center is open year round. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center uses Stowe's story to inspire commitment to social justice and positive change.