1955 Dorothy Dandridge was the first Black woman nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Carmen Jones. The year before year, she was also the first Black woman to appear on the cover of LIFE magazine.
1955 Marian Anderson became the first Black woman to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera and, at the invitation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first to perform at the White House. Anderson’s father died when she was only twelve years old, leaving her mother to raise her and her siblings alone in Philadelphia. With no extra money to pay for formal lessons, Anderson was largely self-taught and practiced soprano, tenor, alto, and bass parts for her church choir. Impressed by her vocal range and dedication to singing, her congregation raised five hundred dollars to pay for formal lessons. And that’s all it took for Marian Anderson to gain recognition for her talent. Soon, she performed at the Lincoln Memorial and Carnegie Hall and gained fans on both sides of the Atlantic. She sang the national anthem at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Kennedy.
A stamp printed in the USA shows Ethel Waters (1896-1977), circa 1994
1962 Ethel Waters became the first Black actress to earn an Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on the “Goodnight Sweet Blues” episode of Route 66. She was also the first Black actress to integrate “The Great White Way,” as Broadway was known in the 1920s and 1930s, and was the first Black person, male or female, to host her own prime time variety show, The Ethel Waters’ Show, a fifteen-minute NBC program that aired a decade before Nat King Cole’s show.
Actress Diahann Carroll at the 33rd Annual NAACP Image Awards at Universal Studios, Hollywood.
1968 Diahann Carroll became the first Black actress to land a leading role in the television series Julia. Her work on the series brought her the very first nomination for a Primetime Emmy for a Black actress and helped her win a Golden Globe Award for “Best Actress in a Television Series.” Her role in Julia was notable because it was one of the first television roles with a Black actress who wasn’t cast a domestic worker in a white household.
1969 Linda Martell, a rhythm and blues and country singer, became the first Black woman to join musician Roy Acuff on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium for the weekly radio broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, Martell was only the second Black performer (after Charley Pride) to grace the stage of the longest continually running radio program in the United States, which first aired its program in 1925. Martell was also one of the few Black country singers to make a guest appearance on the weekly television variety show Hee Haw.
Find more Badass Trailblazers in Entertainment on pages 71, 91, and 140.
“Yes, I do have a big ego…and I am in love with myself…because if you don’t love yourself, how can anybody love you back?”
—Mel B., English singer-songwriter, rapper, producer, model, television personality, and author.
Dear Badass Black Girl,
Think about what comes easy to you and not to others. If certain tasks or activities seem so easy, maybe you can use them to express one—or more—talent. Do people tell you that you explain things so clearly and are such a good listener that you would make a great teacher? Do they say, “I wish I could do that!” Or “Wow! You did that?” Those are your trigger phrases. The next time you hear them, take note and recognize you are being praised for your secret talent.
When I was a small girl, my parents were very strict with my older sisters—they were not allowed to go to parties, and they hardly ever had friends over to our house. My father was all hard angles—his body could cut you if you got close if you weren’t careful, if you didn’t know the right way to move around him.
But by the time I turned thirteen, my parents were too tired to police my life. My older sisters had worn them out, and my teenage years became one party after another, not only night after night, but sometimes an afternoon gathering at one house followed by an evening party somewhere else. I danced, sang, and danced, and sang. I wore trendy wide-legged jeans, white denim, neon belly shirts, and dresses with abstract, multi-colored designs. At thirteen, I was running my own show, but parties won’t get you far in life.
And partying didn’t make me happy. What brought me real joy were the times when I was alone where it was quiet and I didn’t have to sing, dance, and be part of a crowd. I loved to sit in my father’s study and avidly read Corneille and Racine plays, Tintin comic books, and the adventures of Fantômette, the French teenage crime fighter. I loved the smell of books: Musty, inky—earthy, perhaps. It wasn’t just the smell of paper. That smell was mixed with page-turning sweat, the spilled ingredients hastily swabbed off the pages of my mother’s Haitian recipe book. The smell of eagerness and my hunger for words. The smell of my world.
So, I became a writer. At school, my teachers loved my stories so much they shared them with the class. Sister Anne-Marie (I went to an all-girls Catholic school) put me in charge of the morning prayer, and I wrote poems to God that made students weep and occasionally rose the hairs on the back of my own neck.
I was good at this.
What makes you happy? Take a sheet of paper and, without thinking too much about it, write down tasks and activities that bring you joy and satisfaction. (If you’re in school, avoid focusing solely on academic life. Think about everything else that excites you: your passions or your hobbies.) Then, ask yourself, what aspects of each task or activity you particularly like. For example, if you’re currently a team leader for an extracurricular activity, what excites you the most? Is it taking the lead on some projects? Or, is it paying attention to your classmates—making sure everyone has a part in the project and can bring their special talents to the group?
It’s about identifying what captivates you the most. To do this, focus on what you’d like to do right now, not in ten or twenty years. Imagine the weekend is coming and you have several hours to indulge in your favorite activity. No school deadlines. No social engagements. You can spend hours doing what you want all by yourself. You can forget the world and allow yourself to be (pleasantly) absorbed in one task you find both challenging and fulfilling. If you can find an activity that makes time fly and brings you joy, you’re in the zone.
There: You’re on your way to finding your talents. If you are in the zone, it is likely that you use one or more of your strengths. The next step is to identify the other skills required by this type of task and sharpen them.
Too many Black girls had/have to survive a childhood in neighborhoods where death, drugs, and violence surround us. The most dangerous cities in America (Oakland, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Detroit) have large Black populations in some of the most crime-dense parts of the country.
How can community organizations like nonprofits, churches, charities, youth groups, after-school programs, fraternal organizations, and others focused on furthering education, help reduce crime and find alternatives to violence? How can you get involved?
Google It!
AFFIRMATION: I choose happiness. I choose greatness. I know there’s nothing standing in my way that I can’t handle. I can do this. The sunrise fills me with energy, and every breath I take fills my soul with ease. However big the mountain, I can climb it. Wonderful things are coming my way. Today, I choose to be confident.
“Life