Central High School graduate Kate Spradley awarded MacArthur ‘genius’ grant

The latest crop of MacArthur Fellows dropped Monday, and Little Rock native and Texas State University forensic anthropologist Kate Spradley made the cut. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the MacArthur Fellowship — known informally as the “genius grant” — it’s awarded annually to a cohort of 20 to 30 individuals across a diverse array of fields who demonstrate “exceptional creativity” and “promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments.” Endowed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the honor comes with a whopping $800,000 doled out over 5 years — with zero strings attached. 

Spradley, a graduate of Central High School and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville (where she earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree), received the award for her work with Operation Identification, a Texas State University program that helps to “identify and repatriate unidentified human remains found along or in close proximity to the South Texas border through community outreach, scientific analysis, advocacy, and collaboration with governmental and non-governmental organizations.” Those remains usually belong to Central American migrants. 

“These individuals that are coming across the border, they’re marginalized in both life and in death. I think every person has rights in life and in death, and families deserve to have answers,” Spradley said in a video produced by the MacArthur Foundation. 

Spradley further explained the stakes of her work to NPR: 

Everyone should have dignity in death. And there is no dignity in taking someone, burying them and just forgetting about it — and never returning to try to further investigate who this person was or how to get them back to their family. The torture that the families were going through, not knowing where their loved ones were. …

Texas, like every border state, has pretty hostile terrain. It’s all just scrub brush and cedar trees and sandy soil. So it’s hard to walk, it’s hot, and there’s nothing to orient you north. So sometimes people get lost, they can’t keep up, and they might wander around in circles.

Side note: If the scale of Spradley’s achievements intimates you, maybe this tidbit of trivia will make you feel better: According to an interview on Texas State University’s Office Hours podcast, some of Spradley’s first jobs were at the Little Rock Zoo and U.S. Pizza. The stars — they’re just like us!