50 Black SheRoes: Part 3, Singers and Actresses

Singing and Acting SheRoes

Hattie McDaniel	Dorothy Dandridge
Josephine Baker

• Hattie McDaniel – the first black actor to win an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Mammy in 1939′s Gone With The Wind. About playing the role of a servant, she said, “It’s better to get $7,000 a week for playing a servant than $7 a week for being one.” [she has gotten alot of flack for portraying a stereotypical role; I applaud her for taking lemons and turning them into lemonade, by supporting her community and assisting others in obtaining college degrees through her earnings].
• Dorothy Dandridge – first black woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award, for the title role in Carmen Jones
• Josephine Baker – the first African American woman to star in a major motion picture [the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927)], to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. Although she became a French citizen in 1937, she contributed to the Civil Rights Movement in America and the French Resistance during World War II. Baker became a muse for contemporary authors, painters, designers, and sculptors including Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior.

Ruby Dee	Diahann Carroll

• Ruby Dee – actress, playwright and activist, among other things. Her career in acting has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades. She was married to fellow actor Ossie Davis for 57 years. Together they were notable civil rights activists.
• Diahann Carroll – singer and actress. In 1962 she became the first black woman to win a Tony Award for Best Actress, for the role of Barbara Woodruff in the musical No Strings. Carroll is best known for her title role in the 1968 television series Julia, which made her the first African American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.

Marian Anderson	Mahalia Jackson
Aretha Franklin (wasn’t she just a doll!)

• Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones – aka “Sissieretta Jones”, was a famous soprano opera singer in her day. She sang for President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 and three consecutive after him, Presidents Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. She was the first black person to sing at the Music Hall in New York (rename Carnegie Hall) also in 1892.
• Marian Anderson – this opera singer entered the pages of history in 1939, when she was denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution to sing at Constitution Hall because she was black. Instead, she sang outdoors on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a crowd of 75,000 people [First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest of their refusal]. She was the first black person to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1955.
• Dinah Washington – one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century. Washington started singing the blues, but also sang pop and R&B. She won a Grammy in 1959 for her song What A Diff’rence A Day Made; this song and 2 others were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: Unforgettable and Teach Me Tonight.
• Mahalia Jackson – one of the most influential gospel singers and credited as the first Queen of Gospel music. In 1946, Jackson recorded the song “Move On Up a Little Higher”, which sold more than 8 million copies and was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In addition, this great singer mentored Albertina Walker and Aretha Franklin.
• Aretha Franklin – the ‘Queen of Soul’ has won 18 Grammys, had 20 #1 singles on the Billboard R&B charts, and 45 “Top 40″ hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In 1987 Franklin became the first female artist to be entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Franklin #1 on it’s list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.

Be sure to read tomorrow’s post, Part 4: Civil Rights Leaders.

50 Black SheRoes: Part 2, Arts and Fashion

Arts and Fashion SheRoes

Toni Morrison	Alice Walker
Maya Angelou	Lorraine Hansberry

• Toni Morrison – in 1982 became the first black winner of the Nobel Prize in literature
• Gwendolyn Brooks – first black winner of the Pulitzer Prize, in 1950 for Annie Allen
• Alice Walker – first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, in 1982 for The Color Purple
• Phyllis Wheatley – the first black published writer; a book of her poems was published in England in 1773
• Sonia Sanchez – a prolific poet and professor, very active during the Black Arts movement
• Juanita Hall - the first black winner of a Tony award, for playing Bloody Mary in South Pacific
• Maya Angelou – poet and widely aclaimed autobiographer; nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her volume of poetry Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die in 1971
• Ntozake Shange – black feminist, playwright, poet; won an Obie award for her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf
• Lorraine Hansberry – playwright and author; best known for her play A Raisin In The Sun, the first play written by a black woman to appear on Broadway

Donyale Luna covers British Vogue, March 1966
Naomi Sims covers Ladies Home Journal, November 1968	Beverly Johnson covers American Vogue, August 1974

• Donyale Luna – one of the first notable black models and the first black covergirl; first African American to cover British Vogue and named model of the year in 1966
• Naomi Sims – widely regarded as the first black supermodel; notably the first dark-skinned model to receive wide fame
• Beverly Johnson – first black model to land the cover of American Vogue in 1974

Part 3: Singers and Actresses

50 Black SheRoes and Why We Love Them

Black History Month was originally instituted as “Negro History Week” in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson. By the time I entered high school in 1994, Black History Month became a time to recite the same often regurgitated facts about Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X and a small number of other black history makers. I’m not even sure if kids today include all of these days in their black history month facts.   We have such a rich history as a people. I decided to highlight 50 black women whose contributions to black history and history overall are substantial and various. We love them because of their examples of perserverance, innovation, sacrifice and ultimately success. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed putting this list together.  

50 Black SheRoes and Why We Love Them

  Part 1: Political and Activist SheRoes  

Shirley Chisholm – In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress; in 1972 she became the first major-party black candidate for President and first woman to run for the Democratic nomination

• Stephanie Tubbs Jones – served as a Congresswoman for the 11th district of Ohio for 9 years
• Donna Brazil – political strategist; was the first African American to manage a major presidential campaign (Vice President Al Gore, 2000)
• Sharon Pratt  Kelly – first black woman to serve as mayor of a major city (Washington, DC from 1991-1995)
• The Honorable Frankie Muse Freeman – civil rights attorney; first woman appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1964
• Angela Davis – professor, political activist; worked with the Black Panther Party and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• Patricia Roberts Harris – among numerous achievements, she was the first black woman to serve as an ambassador; Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965-1967
• Barbara Jordan – served as a Congresswoman for the 18th district of Texas from 1973-1979
• Carol Mosely-Braun – first and only black woman elected to the Senate, Senator for Illinois from 1993-1999
• Ida B. Wells – there is so much to say about Ida B. Wells; women’s suffrage activist, women’s movement activist, early civil rights activist, journalist, anti-lynching crusader and one of the founders of the NAACP.

  Part 2: The Arts and Fashion SheRoes

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