“Selma” director Ava DuVernay and rapper LL Cool J are among the recipients of Harvard University’s 2017 W.E.B. Du Bois medals. This medal honors those who have made significant contributions to African and African-American history and culture.
Other medalists this year include political strategist Donna Brazile, artist Kara Walker, Microsoft Chairman John Thompson and others. DuVernay recently garnered another accolade when the Creative Arts Emmy Awards for her presentation of mass incarceration in Netflix’s 13th.
The awards are presented by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Harvard professor and Hutchins Center director Henry Louis Gates, Jr. praised this year’s recipients.
“These eight new recipients of the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal look to the future as they celebrate the past,” Gates said in a statement via the Boston Globe. “They bring their genius and their abiding sense of social responsibility to the arts, public service, the corporate realm, and philanthropy. To tie their names to the great Du Bois honors all, and advances the Hutchins Center’s mission to educate, to interrogate and to inspire.”
The event will take place at the fifth-annual Hutchins Center Honors on October 4.
Congratulations to honorees Ava DuVernay and LL Cool J!