Jeffery Warren, a white recent graduate of Riverside’s King High School in California, received a scholarship worth $1,000 but quickly returned the prize money after he discovered the scholarship was only intended for African American students.
Small bursts of laughter escaped the audience when Jeffrey Warren approached the stage to receive the scholarship from the Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club. After Warren discovered the reason for the awkward laughter, he returned the money in an act that was quite noble of him. The wording on the scholarship application encouraged African American students to apply but never strictly enforced that students of other ethnicities couldn’t receive the scholarship.
By all means, Warren could have kept the $1,000 scholarship and wouldn’t have violated any of the scholarship’s rules.
“I knew they were trying to do a good deed for the African-American community. I had no trouble giving it back to them at all,” the 17-year-old student told KABC-TV.
Since the scholarship was created in 2005 it has never been awarded to a student that wasn’t black.
ABC News reported that after Warren returned the money, it was awarded to two African American students who will be attending Cornell University and Xavier University in the fall. The language of the scholarship rules and guidelines has been changed to strictly enforce that only black students can apply.
