‘I Have Risen’ commemorates “the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Ron Brown Scholarship Program, an endowed college scholarship fund that rewards African-American youth for excellence in academia, commitment to community service, and leadership potential.” It includes 50 essays from the 181 students who have been selected to participate. The essays were written when the students were 16 or 17 years old. The reflections of Katori Hall of Memphis are included. This is the story of how she became a member of what she calls “a family.”

Katori Hall is in her second year of the playwriting program at The Juilliard School – the world renowned performing arts conservatory in New York City. Born and raised in Memphis, she graduated from Craigmont High School in 1999. She grew up in Raleigh after her family moved there from Orange Mound when she was about five-years-old.
Hall became a Ron Brown Scholar in 1999. She rode the prestigious scholarship to Columbia University, where she majored in African-American studies and creative writing. Afterwards, she went to Harvard for two years to study in the acting program in the American Repertory Theatre Institute.
Her next stop was back to New York for two years. In 2007, she landed at Juilliard. In a very real sense, her journey started online.
“My junior year I was searching hard for a number of outside scholarships because I felt wouldn’t be able to go to college unless I had outside scholarships,” said Hall during a recent interview.
“My father unfortunately had a stroke that year. They had to use my college fun in order to survive and pay the mortgage and do various things. All that money had dried up and I didn’t necessarily want my dream of going to college to dry up.”
She filled out a questionnaire and the Ron Brown Scholars program popped up.
“I was like very, very excited to see that and how it really focused on African-American youth who were very much into academic excellence but also leadership skills, in addition to having a very strong sense of voluntarism.”
In high school, Hall did a lot of volunteering and she thought the Ron Brown program “seems perfect for me, if I can get it.”
First things first; she applied. During the spring of her senior year she was summoned to Washington to interview for the scholarship. It was her second trip to D.C. and “probably the second time I had been on a plane.”
Nervous and uncertain, Hall pushed forward.
“I remember it being tough. I don’t exactly remember the questions. I just remember them asking questions that made me think about more than just myself; it made me think about the world and my place in it,” she said.
That night, Hall learned she had landed the opportunity to pursue her dream: college. The award was $40,000; $10,000 a year for tuition, room and board and anything related to school expenses.
Today, she still is associated with the Ron Brown Scholars Program.
“It’s not like other scholarships where you get a check in the mail and that’s it. It really is about creating this network of people; it’s really about creating a family,” she said. “We all stay in touch with each other. We all do volunteer service projects with each other to this very day.”
Recently, the scholars gathered for their triennial conference in Virginia. Every three years they gather for inspiration from each other and special speakers who have excelled in their particulars fields.
“It is really a lifetime commitment,” said Hall. “That’s why it is such a competitive scholarship program because you want the type of people who will continue in this.”
What’s next for Hall? “Oh, I’ve got so many plans, let me tell you,” she quips and laughs out loud.
She just put up an off-Broadway play called “Hoodoo Love” that is set in Memphis and about to get published. She’s now working on another play – “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning” – set in Memphis in a beauty shop/boarding house in World War II.
“From this point on, I just want to continue writing plays, writing stories, stepping into TV and film. I’m also an actress. I just really want to continue exploring the arts and seeing what kind of work I can leave behind for others to do; creating jobs for actors and actresses of color. That’s what I really want to do,” she said.
Hall loves to tell stories “that no one knows about. I like to create characters that we haven’t seen on stage, particularly African-American characters we haven’t seen on stage or seen on the silver screen. That’s my ultimate dream: to keep doing that.
“I think if I could do that every day, I would be the happiest person alive,” she said. “The Ron Brown Scholars program has helped me to do that because they have provided this incredible amount of support.”
The program put her in the company of people doing “everything that you could possibly think of. They own their own companies. They are singers. You are totally inspired to try be whatever and whoever you want to be because you are surrounded by your peers who are doing the same thing.”

I Have Risen
Essays by African-American Youth
Cap Charitable Foundation; $35
All proceeds go to the Ron Brown Scholars Program

New York, New York. . .
Ron Brown Scholar Katori Hall of Memphis has “so many plans” thanks in large part to the support she has received from the Ron Brown Scholarship Program. This 2005 picture of the playwright and actress was taken in New York City and appears with her essay in the new book, "I Have Risen."

Hot ticket. . . Katori Hall’s performance Aug. 8 at the Paramount in Virginia during the triennial conference of the Ron Brown Scholars Program was a hot ticket. (Courtesy photo)

Let me entertain you. . . “I just really want to continue exploring the arts,” said Hall, shown on stage at the Paramount in Virginia on Aug. 8. (Courtesy photo)

Hall marks. . . A scene from Katori Hall’s Memphis-based play, “Hoodoo Love.” (Courtesy photo)

In his honor. . . The Ron Brown Scholars program bears the name of Ronald Harmon Brown, the United States Secretary of Commerce who served during the first term of President Bill Clinton. He was the first African American to hold the position. Brown, who also served as head of the Democratic National Committee, died in a plane crash in Croatia on April 3, 1996.