Chapter 1: The Potential of Government-Sponsored Restorative Justice: A US Case Study of the Brown Scholarship Fund

This chapter explored the justice potential of The Brown Scholarship Fund through 14 ethnographic case studies. Findings specific to the individual scholarship experiences demonstrated age-mitigated material benefits, literacy exclusion, personal growth, and racial divide. The analysis of the Brown Scholarship Fund’s restorative justice potential demonstrated a lack of attention to emotional harms, excluded displaced populations, making history visible, and the next generation. The chapter findings indicated that the voices of those wronged were muffled during the design of policy. As a result, The Brown Scholarship Fund did not respond to the needs of those impacted by the school closings. Policymaking often occurred in segregated spaces and further diminished the justice potential of The Brown Scholarship Fund.