RECIPIENTS’ STORIES

Akilah Watkins-Butler will study the impact of African-American marriage patterns on community functioning.

Fellowship Funding Fuels Study of African-American Marriage Patterns

Akilah Watkins-Butler, an LAS doctoral student in sociology, is one of 60 students nationwide to receive a Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship. With the $60,000 award, Watkins-Butler will be able to fund a study of African-American marriage patterns and family formation and its impact on community functioning. As part of her research in a to-be-determined Chicago neighborhood, she will examine key community indicators such as economic health, homeownership, and time residents spend there. She will also conduct interviews with residents.

“I'm really interested to find out why African-American marriage rates have been declining, especially over the last 70 years, and what that decline has meant for communities,” Watkins-Butler said. “I want to find out how [residents] perceive their community changing, if any, and what they perceive as the effect that marriage has on it.”

Watkins-Butler earned a master's degree in sociology from UIC in May. The Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship will provide her $20,000 in annual funding for three years, in addition to a $2,000 award to UIC. The vital funding from this fellowship will allow her the opportunity to advance her educational pursuits in a variety of ways, beyond the economics of the study itself.

For instance, Watkins-Butler plans to produce a mini-documentary and a book following her dissertation to bring greater attention to the issue. “I hope to capture people's voices and package it in a way that people that work with communities of color can use it as a tool,” she said. “I want to devote scholarship in a way that everyday folks can use it and learn.”

Watkins-Butler clearly understands the importance and impact that scholarship can make on the lives of those in the communities she will study. If not for donors and the scholarships and funding they provide, studies such as these would never be realized, and the opportunity to help improve identified situations might never materialize. It is for this reason, and more, that Watkins-Butler is grateful to move forward with her ambitious project. She said there is also a personal aspect to the study.

“I live in a world where many of my friends and family members want to get married but aren't able to get married because of a lot of social barriers,” she said. A native of Brooklyn, Watkins-Butler is a longtime community organizer and activist with interests focused on helping at-risk children and communities. She formerly served as a program officer with the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, where she received a Ford Foundation fellowship in 2005. Along with her husband, Kamau, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, she co-authored The Love Ethic: The Reason Why You Can't Find And Keep Beautiful Black Love.

Adapted from a UIC News article by Brian Flood on July 1, 2009.