The “O Brother, Where Are Thou?” star will be digging deep into his pockets to gift US$500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative.
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In a statement issued to PEOPLE, the actor joked that the donation was in response to Donald Trump making Juneteenth “very famous.”
Clooney was referring to a recent Wall Street Journal interview in which the United States president spoke about June 19.
“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” he said. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
Trump was discussing his decision to hold a campaign rally on Juneteenth amid ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. The rally has now been moved to the following day.
Clooney has long been vocal about systemic racism in the U.S.
Earlier this month, he addressed the issue in an essay for The Daily Beast.
“The anger and the frustration we see playing out once again in our streets is just a reminder of how little we’ve grown as a country from our original sin of slavery,” he wrote. “The fact that we aren’t actually buying and selling other human beings anymore is not a badge of honour.”
