Minority Fellowship Program Testimonials: Aldon D. Morris

The ASA Minority Fellowship Program played a pivotal role in launching my academic career.

I am a first-generation college graduate raised in the context of a lower income, working-class background. The first 12 years of my life were lived with my grandparents in rural Mississippi, where I picked and chopped cotton. I attended Jim Crow segregated racially inferior schools. Black students were programmed to receive little education and to spend their lives serving white folks.

At age 13, I moved to Chicago and was raised by a single mother with five children. She worked at low-paying jobs, including secretarial and domestic work. In Chicago, most Black students were not expected to receive much formal education and were slated to do manual labor in factories and related venues. When I graduated from high school, I followed the script by working in factories. Because of the advice of my mother and the raging Vietnam war, I chose to enroll in community college. There, I was taught by talented and encouraging professors. Because of them, I went to Bradley University, where I was again encouraged because of my academic promise to enroll in graduate school and earn a doctorate in sociology.

Throughout my college career, I proceeded by trial and error while beset by intellectual insecurities but a fierce determination to succeed. By the time I became ABD, I had begun to excel academically but did not receive much encouragement from my white professors. It is fair to say that in many respects I soared solo. For my dissertation, I researched and wrote on the Civil Rights Movement. I had every intention of producing an original dissertation that would set the record straight regarding this pivotal movement. I knew that to do so, I would need to travel across the country, interviewing crucial leaders and organizers of the movement. How was I to do so, given that I was poor?

I heard about a minority fellowship program that funded promising dissertation research by minority students. I applied and I answered questions about what I expected to do with a PhD. Honestly, I had not given that question much thought. I replied that I was going to write important books and articles, teach, and lecture across the world. I doubted I was accurately predicting my future. I said, “What the hell, let’s see if the members of the MFP committee will endorse my grandiose musings.”

They did! When the MFP awarded me a dissertation fellowship, I began to take my academic claims seriously. The rest is history. At a crucial period in my academic career, the MFP pumped confidence into me, helping me recognize that I was a special type of academic capable of producing scholarship aimed at empowering the marginalized and voiceless. The specialness of the MFP derives from its success in conveying confidence and resources to generations of students with experiences similar to mine. The MFP deserves widespread support because it has proven its worth.