Angelina Jolie is sending another child off to college in the fall: 17-year-old daughter Zahara Jolie-Pitt will be attending Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, in the fall.
The Oscar-winning actress shared the announcement in an Instagram post on Sunday.
“Zahara with her Spelman sisters!” the proud mom captioned the post, which featured her daughter posing with future Spelman classmates. “Congratulations to all new students starting this year. A very special place and an honor to have a family member as a new Spelman girl.”
Jolie also added the hashtags to her post: “#spelman #spelmancollege #spelmansisters #HBCU”
The mom of six was also seen celebrating her daughter’s acceptance over the weekend at a Spelman and Morehouse College alumni event in Los Angeles. In the video, which received more than 355k views on Twitter, Jolie can be seen laughing with fellow parents and dancing to the electric slide. One mom holds Jolie’s hand as she teaches her some of the dance moves, until the Eternals actress steps out and hugs Zahara. Another parent fist bumps Jolie for giving the dance a try.
Jolie adopted her daughter Zahara from Ethiopia in 2005 when she was six months old. The actress also shares five other children with ex-husband Brad Pitt: Maddox, 20, Pax, 18, Shiloh, 16, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 14. Zahara is the second child from the Jolie-Pitt clan to go to college. In 2019, Maddox Jolie-Pitt started his freshman year at Yonsei University in South Korea.
While many fans on social media were amazed at how fast Zahara has grown up, others praised Jolie for sending her daughter to an HBCU – a historically Black college or university.
“Your little baby is in college? This is not possible!! Congrats!!!!” commented one user under Jolie’s Instagram post.
“Angelina Jolie sending her daughter to Spelman just made me love her even more,” one person tweeted.
“I’ve always had respect for how she raised her kids, especially the adopted ones,” wrote someone else. “Angie has always made sure they appreciated their cultures.”
“The important question here is…how old am I if that baby is going to college?” another fan said.
Jolie has previously spoken about the importance of raising her daughter with the knowledge and understanding of her Ethiopian roots. In 2020, Jolie shared how “in awe” she is of her daughter during a conversation with Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate for TIME 100. While discussing how American schools cover Black history in their curriculum, Jolie said: “I don’t know about the schools in Uganda, but I know in the United States there’s a very big question…My daughter is from Ethiopia, one of my children. And I have learned so much from her.”
“She is my family, but she is an extraordinary African woman,” she continued. “Her connection to her country, her continent, is very – it’s her own and it’s something I only stand back in awe of.”
That same year, the 47-year-old humanitarian opened up about raising her children amid the “structural racism” in America, while also acknowleding her own experiences with white privilege.
“A system that protects me but might not protect my daughter – or any other man, woman or child in our country based on skin colour – is intolerable,” Jolie told Harper’s Bazaar.
“We need to progress beyond sympathy and good intentions to laws and policies that actually address structural racism and impunity. Ending abuses in policing is just the start,” she said. “It goes far beyond that, to all aspects of society, from our education system to our politics.”
