Michael Jackson Gave His $1.5 Million Pepsi Settlement to a Burn Center; His Scholarship Is Still Helping Students

Gossip

By Sari Moon

Updated 7 minutes ago, October 1, 2026

Michael Jackson’s $1.5 million Pepsi burn settlement, given to Brotman Medical Center in 1984, and the UNCF scholarship he endowed in 1986 are circulating again because the 2026 biopic Michael revisits the accident. The burn center closed in 1987; the scholarship has helped 492 students and was still awarding money for 2026–27. Here is the story behind what happened in the film.

Michael Jackson gave the hospital that treated his burns the entire $1.5 million he received from Pepsi after his hair caught fire during a commercial shoot in 1984. At Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, California, he’d met other patients recovering from burns.

“I wanted to do something because I was so moved by the other burn patients I met while I was in the hospital,” he wrote in his memoir, Moonwalk.

On December 13, 1984, Brotman renamed its burn ward the Michael Jackson Burn Center. The hospital’s administrator said Jackson’s gift would support research, education and reconstructive surgery, UPI reported. Jackson’s own remarks at the dedication amounted to 2 words: “Thank You.”

The center closed in 1987 after financial losses. Jackson’s fund paid for patient entertainment, the Los Angeles Times reported.

He’d also committed another $1.5 million to students trying to afford college. In 1986, that donation established the Michael Jackson UNCF Endowed Scholarship Fund, according to the United Negro College Fund’s account of the gift.

The scholarship supports students at historically Black colleges and universities studying communications, performing arts and related subjects. In 1988, Jackson added $600,000 in proceeds from a sold-out Madison Square Garden concert.

On March 10 that year, Fisk University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at UNCF’s awards dinner in New York. Dr. Mable Parker McLean, president of Barber-Scotia College, presented him with UNCF’s highest honor, the Frederick D. Patterson Award.

“To want to learn, to have the capacity to learn, and not to be able to is a tragedy,” Jackson told the dinner guests.

By May 2026, UNCF said the scholarship had helped 492 students across 41 historically Black colleges and universities. It’s still offered for the 2026-27 academic year.

For Spelman alumna Kelsey Kenniel, the help came in her last semester. In a 2019 account published by Black America Web, she said the $5,000 award helped pay tuition and other expenses as she worked toward graduating a semester early to save her family money.

“I am forever grateful for the MJ Scholarship. It changed the entire course of my life and legacy,” Kenniel said.

Another recipient, Kenya A. Gray, went on to administer the scholarship herself. She’d been a first-generation college student at Bennett College, where she received Jackson’s scholarship along with awards from the Janet Jackson/Rhythm Nation and Reader’s Digest programs.

Writing for UNCF in 2016, Gray credited those scholarships with easing her parents’ financial burden and encouraging her academically. She graduated with highest honors in 1999 with a degree in mass communication.

By the time she wrote that account, she was managing both Jackson siblings’ scholarship programs at UNCF. “It is a life-altering experience to be able to help students in the exact same manner that was afforded to me,” she wrote.

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