Phylicia Rashard and Cornelius Blanding, Federation Executive Director

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund is holding its fifty-eighth Annual Meeting—a special three-day event beginning Thursday, August 14, 2025, in Birmingham, Alabama, and continuing through Saturday, August 16, at our historic, Rural Training and Research Center in Epes, Alabama.
 
Cornelius Blanding, Federation Executive Director stated, “We are proud to honor Phylicia Rashad as the 24th recipient of the Estelle Witherspoon Lifetime Achievement Award, the Federation’s highest honor. She will be recognized during our largest annual fundraiser as we celebrate nearly 60 years of cooperative development, land retention, and advocacy.“

The award will be presented to Rashad during the Annual Estelle Witherspoon Lifetime Achievement Award Banquet on Thursday, August 14, 2025, at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel, located at 2101 Richard Arrington Jr. Blvd. N, Birmingham, Alabama 35203. The program will begin promptly at 7:00 PM Central Time. 

This special evening honors the life and legacy of Estelle Witherspoon, whose lifelong work uplifted her community, as the Manager of the Freedom Quilting Bee in Alberta (Wilcox County), Alabama and reflected the true meaning of cooperation and service

On Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16, 2025, the focus will shift to the Federation’s Rural Training and Research Center, located in Sumter County between Epes and Gainesville, Alabama. Workshops on cooperative development, land retention, heirs property, advocacy around the Farm Bill,
and other issues will be held. Tours of the RTRC and demonstration forestry, livestock and garden projects will be held.

The Saturday sessions will include a Prayer Breakfast and a Business Meeting. The Federations Board of Directors and Executive Director will report to membership on progress in the past year and projections for coming years.

As an accomplished actress and stage director, Ms. Rashad’s decades-long career reflects the same spirit of excellence, resilience, and community-focused service that defines the Federation. From her celebrated performances in works rooted in Black storytelling to her leadership as Dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts and her role as Brand Ambassador for the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, Ms. Rashad continues to champion the preservation of Black history, land, and legacy—ideals at the heart of the Federation’s work in civil rights, cooperative economic development and land retention across the rural South.

Rashad became a household name when she portrayed Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show, a character whose enduring appeal earned her numerous honors and awards. She has appeared in NBC’s This Is Us ( Emmy nominations), in the popular Fox TV series Empire, in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Peabody Award-winning series, David Makes Man, on the OWN Network, Diarra From Detroit, The Good Fight, Little America, and The Crossover.

While television was a catalyst in the rise of Ms. Rashad’s career, she has also been a force on the stage, appearing both on and Off Broadway, often in projects that showcase her musical talent such as Jelly’s Last Jam, Into the Woods, Dreamgirls and The Wiz.

Highly respected in education and the arts, Ms. Rashad recently finished her time as Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. In February 2023, she was named the first person to hold the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities at Howard.