The Freedom From Religion Foundation is delighted to provide, in partnership with a freethinking African-American group, student scholarships for the sixth year running, this year doubling the total amount to $20,000.

FFRF is granting Black Skeptics Los Angeles, an African-American humanist-atheist community-based organization, $20,000 for four awards to outstanding secular students of color who will be first in their family to attend college. Each recipient will receive $5,000 apiece to support college education and expenses through FFRF’s Forward Freethought Scholarship fund, generously endowed by FFRF member Lance Bredvold. The application is available here, with a deadline of June 26.

In 2013, Black Skeptics Los Angeles spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative, which focuses on undocumented, foster care, homeless, LGBTQI, system-involved and secular youth who are underrepresented in the college population. FFRF previously has been underwriting annual $2,500 scholarships for four students in partnership with BSLA. Special consideration this year will be given to students on whom the pandemic has had an economic impact.

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation is proud to continue supporting freethinking students of color — a minority within a minority,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They need all the encouragement they can get, even more so in the trying times we’re experiencing.”

Black Skeptics Los Angeles founder Sikivu Hutchinson explains the purpose of the scholarship program.

“Secular African-American youth disproportionately come from religious backgrounds and communities,” she says. “These youth are often marginalized in K-12 and higher education due to their nonconformity. This scholarship program provides a platform for their voices and experiences.”

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is a nonprofit organization that “works as an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church.” The state/church watchdog sponsors publications and competitions and conducts outreach and education on secularism worldwide.

Black Skeptics Los Angeles is a 501(c)(3) community-based organization that provides resources and education for non-believers, humanists and secularists of color. It was created to provide resources for nonbelievers of color and combat stereotypes about atheists not being socially responsible. Responding directly to the school-to-prison pipeline crisis in communities of color, Black Skeptics is the first atheist organization to specifically address college pipelining for youth of color.