Trailblazing Women in the Arts

We are continuing our celebration of Women’s History Month this week acknowledging women who have had an impact on the arts and culture. Since March is also National Reading Month, it’s noteworthy that all these women are authors among all their other contributions.

Listing all the awards Toni Morrison has won would take a significant amount of time but it would certainly be interesting. She has been awarded two Nobel Prizes—one for literature and the other for fiction. In 2012, President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The National Endowment for the Arts gave her their highest award and more.

She played a significant role in bringing Black literature into the mainstream. She has written poetry, autobiography, fiction, and an award-winning play titled Dreaming Emmett based on a true story of the murder by white men of a Black teenager.

Her most celebrated work is most likely Beloved, which became a major motion picture produced by Oprah Winfrey.

Speaking of Oprah Winfrey not only is she a producer, actress, author, talk show host, and media executive, she is also a philanthropist.

In addition to her talk show which ran for 25 years, are the films The Color Purple, Beloved and Selma (which her Harpo Productions coproduced).

Born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother where they lacked indoor plumbing, Oprah is ranked as the greatest black philanthropist in American history. She has focused her philanthropy on education, including supporting a girls’ school in South Africa. She also donated her shares of Weight Watchers to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

She has coauthored five books and publishes O, The Oprah Magazine.

Our final mention is another member of the performing arts, Misty Copeland, who became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, one of the three leading classical ballet companies in the United States.

In 2024 this accomplishment was honored when she received theGrio Award for Trailblazer Icon for breaking down walls in the world of ballet and making it more accessible for Black and brown people and doing so with style.

Misty is also the author of several books.

We urge you to continue reading and learning about all the women who have made amazing contributions to society.