April 25 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 25.

United Negro College Fund was founded.

It is is a philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for 37 private historically Black colleges and universities.

The organization awards 10,000 students annually through 400 scholarship and internship programs, so that students from low-and moderate-income families can afford college tuition, books and room and board.

In 1943, Frederick D. Patterson wrote a letter to The Pittsburgh Courier proposing the creation of an alliance of black colleges that would raise money for their mutual benefit.

Its first campaign received the support of many prominent Americans, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, II.

The collective effort raised $765,000, equivalent to $10 million today, which is three times what its member institutions had raised separately the previous year.

In June 2020, philanthropists Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $120 million to the UNCF to be used as scholarship funds for students enrolled at UNCF institutions. Their single donation is the largest in UNCF history.

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