With billionaire author MacKenzie Scott giving record amounts to multiple Historically Black Colleges and Universities, it begs the question: What is her connection to the Black community? In a word, Toni Morrison.
As theGrio previously reported on a recent episode of “TheGrio Weekly,” the late Nobel Peace Prize-winning author was once Scott’s creative writing professor and wound up having a significant hand in the trajectory of her career and ultimately her life.
In the early 1990s, Scott was an English major at Princeton University, where she studied creative writing under the literary icon. The “Beloved” writer once called Scott “one of the best students I’ve ever had,” praising her discipline and storytelling instincts, as reported by The New York Times in a 2022 investigation.
After graduating, Scott moved to New York City, where she was waitressing and trying to make it as a writer. When she applied for a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co., Morrison apparently called and offered a glowing recommendation that helped her former student land the position. There, Scott met none other than Jeff Bezos, who was a senior vice president at the firm. The two began dating and, after just three months, were engaged. Six months later, they married.
In 1994, the couple relocated to Seattle, where Bezos founded an online bookstore out of their garage, which would soon become Amazon. Scott played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in those early days, handling the company’s accounting and operations before stepping back to focus on writing. Over the next 25 years, Amazon’s success transformed the pair into one of the wealthiest couples in the world.
In 2019, the same year Morrison passed away at the age of 88, Scott and Bezos finalized their divorce. She received roughly 25% of his Amazon holdings, valued at around $36 billion at the time, and almost immediately began giving the money away. Signing the Giving Pledge that same year, Scott vowed to donate her fortune “until the safe is empty.”
Since then, she has given billions to organizations centered on equity, education, and racial justice, including record-breaking gifts to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Among them: $80 million to Howard University, $63 million to Morgan State University, $50 million to Virginia State, and tens of millions more to Spelman College, Clark Atlanta, and Alcorn State.
