Renowned singer/rapper and actress Queen Latifah is being recognized by Harvard University for her contributions to Black history and culture, reports the Associated Press.
Harvard awarded the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal to Queen Latifah and six other recipients yesterdat (Oct. 22), according to the Cambridge, Mass., school’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Other honorees include poet and educator Elizabeth Alexander, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch III, poet Rita Dove, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television Sheila Johnson, artist Kerry James Marshall and Robert Smith, founder, chairman and chief executive of Vista Equity Partners.
The award is named after Du Bois, a scholar, writer, editor, and civil rights pioneer who became the first Black student to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1895.
