Long Live the King, Netflix Teams up with Howard for the $5.4 Million Chadwick Boseman Scholarship

Our forever King Chadwick Boseman will continue to inspire for generations to come. From his movies and now with the help of Netflix and Howard University, through education. The mega Hollywood streaming service and the HBCU have established The Chadwick A. Boseman Memorial Scholarship, which will be given to recipients who all exemplify "a drive for excellence, leadership, respect, empathy, and passion," according to the school. The full scholarship will cover four years of tuition at Howard's College of Fine Art, which was renamed after Boseman earlier this year. Boseman is a 2000 alum of Howard, earning a Bachelor of fine arts degree for directing, with his last two acting credits, Da Five Bloods, and Ma' Rainey's Black Bottom, falling under the Netflix banner.

This semester, one scholarship will be awarded to each class year. After that, one incoming freshman will receive the scholarship annually. Students in the dramatic arts will be considered first. "It is with immense pleasure and deep gratitude that we announce the creation of an endowed scholarship in honor of alumnus Chadwick Boseman, whose life and contributions to the arts continue to inspire," Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, president of Howard University, said in a statement "This scholarship embodies Chadwick's love for Howard, his passion for storytelling, and his willingness to support future generations of Howard students."

In a 2018 Rollingstone interview, Chadwick's former professor Vera Katz mentioned that Boseman at Howard "was very interested in Black history, very aware of his culture, and spoke about it a lot. And the plays he wrote had a lot of African reverberations, African ritual in it.” In the same article, Chadwick also reflected on his time at Howard, "At a historically Black college, you’re getting turned on to all these things – the pantheon of our culture,” he said of his time studying there. “It’s John Coltrane, it’s James Baldwin. And it’s Black Panther.”

With high regard for education, the partnership between Netflix and Howard, further keeps the memory alive of the Anderson, South Carolina native, in hopes of contributing to the next generation of brilliant storytellers.

Long Live the King.

Photo Credit: Justin Knight/Howard University