Marcia Chatelain Wins Pulitzer Prize

Marcia Chatelain, 2017 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fellow, was awarded the 2021 prize in history for her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.

The Pulitzer Prize board called Chatelain’s book “a nuanced account of the complicated role the fast-food industry plays in African American communities [and] a portrait of race and capitalism that masterfully illustrates how the fight for civil rights has been intertwined with the fate of Black businesses.”

This is the second Pulitzer Prize for a New America National Fellow. In 2019 Eliza Griswold, class of 2010, was awarded the prize for her book Amity and Prosperity. In 2020 George Packer, Class of 2017, was nominated for his book Our Man.

To read an interview with Chatelain in The Fifth Draft, the Fellows program newsletter, click here