PBMF’S MCKENZIE FELLOWSHIP SUPPORTS HARRELL’S DREAM
By Tafarah Cherilus
The Pittsburgh Black Media Federation (PBMF) proudly announces Donovan Harrell as the recipient of its Edna B. McKenzie Fellowship. Through this fellowship, Harrell will travel to Cuba and explore the African Diaspora there by focusing on the music, food, culture, activism, and overall African influences on today’s population.
The Edna B. McKenzie Fellowship was founded in 2013 to support PBMF journalists interested in reporting stories connected to the African Diaspora internationally and domestically. The fellowship is named for the pioneering Pittsburgh Courier journalist and history scholar Edna B. McKenzie, and supports journalists with a grant of $1,500 to enable their reporting.
Harrell, an award-winning multimedia journalist, is the secretary for PBMF and works as a communications specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a freelance writer, who has long had a dream of traveling and reporting internationally. “I felt like I had to kind of put that dream on hold for a while,” Harrell said. “But getting this fellowship makes my dream come true.”
Harrell first aspired to be an international reporter while attending Tallahassee's Florida A&M University. Through his spring break trip to South Africa in 2015, as a junior at the university, Harrel visited locations like Soweto, Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg which influenced how he experienced Blackness differently. This trip was his first time in the continent, and immediately, he felt a sense of connection and alienation. He learned more about Zulu culture through his destinations in South Africa which connected him with a side of history beyond the limited narratives he had grown up with. During his time in South Africa, he was able to separate stereotypes set by American media and connected with the embodied culture he felt was carried across continents and represented through his own culture in America through food, music, art, and creation.
“It hit me profoundly that this was the continent my ancestors came from.”
South Africa further pushed his interest in exploring his own Blackness and what Black expression meant globally.
At Florida A&M, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), Harrell also developed a global consciousness because the campus had diverse students from a wide array of nations and ethnic backgrounds, such as Jamaica, Saint Martin, and Haiti. “It’s just surprising to see how many things are carried from the continent and still practiced in different places,” he said. His experiences in South Africa and with the Black international students on campus heightened his knowledge of colonialism and Africa’s influence on the world, both of which strengthened his desire to report internationally.
However, by the time Harrell graduated from his HBCU, the journalism industry downsized, making international reporting a competitive profession. He found other reporting opportunities, which took him on a different path. The Edna B. McKenzie Fellowship has reignited Harrell’s dream. He plans to travel to the cities of Havana and Matanza to explore the Cuban roots of Pittsburgh musician Hugo Cruz and to report on the African culture and historical influences that shaped Cruz’s music and identity.
While in Cuba, Harrell will also connect with Afro-Cuban artists to explore writing, journalism and the island nation’s connection to slavery. Harrell said he is eager to explore how history, culture or politics make the African Diaspora in Cuba different from the United States.
The Edna B. McKenzie Fellowship, Harrell said, will ease his travel costs but also provide him with an experience that is invaluable.
“I want to learn more about Cuba from these limited understandings I have, and this is an excellent opportunity to experience it.”
