July 16, 1996
Contact: Lew Harris, (615) 322-2706
Two gifts boost endowment for Vanderbilt
African-American church program
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Two gifts totaling $75,000 have provided a boost
to establishing a permanent endowment for the Kelly Miller Smith Institute
on African-American Church Studies at the Vanderbilt Divinity School.
The Jane and Richard Eskind and Family Foundation has given a $50,000 gift
to the Kelly Miller Smith Institute and will provide additional funding
to the institute for a series of conferences on Jewish-African American
relations. Vanderbilt Board of Trust Vice President Rebecca Webb Wilson
and her husband, Spence, have given $25,000 to the KMSI endowment.
The Eskind and Wilson gifts will go toward meeting a $500,000 challenge
grant from an anonymous donor to establish a permanent endowment for the
Kelly Miller Smith Institute. The Divinity School is seeking matching funds
for the challenge grant to bring the institute's endowment to $1 million,
the minimum needed to continue its programs.
"I'm grateful that Jane and Dick decided to do this," said Divinity
School Dean Joseph C. Hough. "This is the first major gift to the challenge
grant, and the first gift is always the one that gets things moving and
generates the kind of interest that will help us meet the goal."
Hough also expressed appreciation for the gift of Wilson and her husband.
A 1965 graduate of Vanderbilt, she is a former assistant U.S. attorney for
the Western District of Tennessee.
She has been active in community projects to relieve poverty and promote
racial understanding in Shelby County. In 1988, she founded Bridge Builders,
a youth leadership program in public and private schools in Shelby County.
She is also a director of the Board of Free the Children.
The Eskinds are strong supporters of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute, andêkind
serves on the advisory board for the institute. "Her support for civil
rights and justice for African Americans is well-known throughout the community,"
said Forrest Harris, director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute. "She
was very much in support of Kelly Miller Smith's social justice activism
in the Nashville community."
Previous grants to the Kelly Miller Smith Institute conclude this year,
resulting in the present endowment drive.
In addition to the $50,000 gift, the Eskind Family Foundation pledged an
additional $15,000 to fund three conferences on Jewish and African-American
relations.
"These conferences can be really exciting," Hough said. "We
are anticipating that we will work through some of the religious groups
that the Kelly Miller Smith Institute has already worked with in large metropolitan
areas where there are fairly high concentrations of African Americans and
Jewish people and where there have been significant issues between those
communities."
The KMSI was founded in 1984 in honor of the late Kelly Miller Smith, assistant
dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School from 1968 until his death in 1984.
Smith was a leading force in Nashville's civil rights movement and the pastor
of First Baptist Church Capitol Hill for the last 33 years of his life.
Faculty of the Divinity School established the Kelly Miller Smith Scholarship
for Ministry in the Black Church in 1985.
-VU-
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This document last updated Jan. 9, 1997