We Speak Your Names: A Celebration (2 page)
The Legends
DR. MAYA ANGELOU
Born April 4, 1928, St. Louis, Missouri;
bestselling author, poet, playwright, actress, stage
and screen producer, civil rights activist
My first memory of Maya Angelou is reading a copy of
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
and being overwhelmed by its courageous combination of truth, love, humor, and heartache. Watching her recite her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton, I couldn't have been prouder to be a part of the sisterhood of black women writers as one of our own spoke for all Americans. She is a writer who always makes me want to work harder to
tell the story straight.
SHIRLEY CAESAR
Born October 13, 1938, Durham, North Carolina;
gospel singer, minister, Broadway performer, eleven-time
Grammy winner, “First Lady of Gospel”
I defy you to listen to Shirley Caesar's classic gospel album
Stranger on the Road
and not find yourself filled with whatever spirit you believe in. That album helped me survive my thirties without losing perspective or hope. I still play “Loose That Man” every couple of Sundays, as loud as I think my neighbors can stand it. So far, I haven't had any complaints.
DIAHANN CARROLL
Born July 17, 1935, Bronx, New York;
Oscar- and Emmy-nominated film, television, and
Broadway actress; women's health activist
Every African American woman of a certain age remembers when
Julia
debuted on television in 1968, and I am no different. Diahann Carroll's presence on that show broke down racial boundaries and gave the African American community a chance to share her talent, beauty, and grace with the world. But it was the complexity and compassion that she showed as the title character in the film
Claudine,
playing against type as a struggling single mother, that moved me more and earned her an Oscar nomination.
ELIZABETH CATLETT
Born April 15, 1915, Washington, D.C.;
sculptor, printmaker, activist
Truly a citizen of the world, Elizabeth Catlett creates work that is deeply rooted in and reflective of the African American experience without ever sacrificing the specificity of her unique artistic vision. Touching one of her exquisite sculptures is like connecting to the soul of a people and the heart of a woman.
RUBY DEE
Born October 27, 1924, Cleveland, Ohio;
stage, film, and television actress; frequent collaborator
with her husband, the late Ossie Davis, recipient of the
National Medal of the Arts and Kennedy Center Honors
I met Ruby Dee as a starstruck teenager when my father, a friend of Dee and Davis, took me backstage after her performance as Cassandra in the classic Greek drama
Agamemnon.
Both lifelong activists, they chatted about the state of the Movement, but I was in awe of her skill as an actress. More than thirty years later, it was an honor to have her play a lead role in my play
Flyin' West
at the Kennedy Center and to call her and Ossie my friends.
KATHERINE DUNHAM
Born June 22, 1909, Joliet, Illinois;
choreographer, dancer, founder of the Katherine Dunham
Dance Company, anthropologist, world traveler, teacher,
named among First 100 of America's Irreplaceable Dance
Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition
Incorporating elements of African, Caribbean, South African, and other ethnic styles into her dances, Katherine Dunham created a unique choreographic vocabulary. Her “Stormy Weather” ballet is a highlight of the classic film of the same name, which also features Lena Horne, William “Bojangles” Robinson, Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers.
ROBERTA FLACK
Born February 10, 1939, Asheville, North Carolina;
singer, songwriter, winner of multiple Grammy awards
When Roberta Flack's debut album,
First Take,
appeared in 1969, it was impossible not to hear “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” on everybody's radio or record player, and impossible not to be moved by it each time. We all wanted to be in love like that. Her duets with the late Donny Hathaway are still classics.
ARETHA FRANKLIN
Born March 25, 1942, Memphis, Tennessee;
singer, songwriter, pianist, winner of sixteen Grammy
awards, first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, “Queen of Soul”
When I was growing up in Detroit, Rev. C. L. Franklin, Aretha's charismatic father, had a huge church a few blocks from my father's more radical, and considerably smaller, congregation. As we passed the crowd streaming into Rev. Franklin's church on Sunday morning my father would tease me that if I could sing like Aretha, our church would be standing room only, too. As much as I wanted to please him, I knew there was no chance of that happening. Nobody will ever sing like Aretha.
NIKKI GIOVANNI
Born June 7, 1943, Knoxville, Tennessee;
poet, activist, teacher
I first met Nikki Giovanni when she was a girl poet from Cincinnati doing a reading at my father's church. She was an unapologetically female voice in a sea of macho male poets, carrying her books in the trunk of a beat-up old car, a perfect Afro crowning her head, and a smile on her face that said there was no better way to live if you were a woman in love with words and revolution—not necessarily in that order. She was right, too.
DR. DOROTHY HEIGHT
Born March 24, 1912, Richmond, Virginia;
activist, advocate, president of the National Council
of Negro Women from 1957 to 1998, recipient
of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Dr. Height likes to tell a story of a lost election in Mississippi when the right to vote was still a life-and-death decision for many black Americans. She was angry that poor black sharecroppers had voted against their own interests to elect a white supremacist candidate who had promised them canned goods. Her friend and sister activist Fannie Lou Hamer shushed her with these simple words:
Those people aren't dumb. They're hungry.
It was a lesson she never forgot.
LENA HORNE
Born June 30, 1917, Brooklyn, New York;
dancer, film actress, singer, Broadway performer, recipient of
Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contribution to the arts
and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award
I grew up listening to my father and my uncles extol the beauty of Lena Horne, but it wasn't until I had a chance to watch her in the 1943 film
Stormy Weather
that I understood she wasn't just beautiful. She was
everything.
Her performance of the movie's title song is a highlight. In 1981, when I saw her one-woman show,
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music,
her talent, beauty, and charisma were undiminished.
CORETTA SCOTT KING
Born April 27, 1927, Marion, Alabama;
musician, activist, author
My first job when I moved to Atlanta in 1969 was as a transcriber for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library Documentation Project. In the midst of her grief, Mrs. King had already put together the beginnings of what would later become the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change. That year, I spent my days with the voices of the Civil Rights Movement in my ears, grateful for a chance to be a part of the work Dr. King had left in his wife's capable hands.
GLADYS KNIGHT
Born May 28, 1944, Atlanta, Georgia;
singer, author, Grammy Award winner, inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Lifetime Achievement
Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1998
When I was living in Atlanta in the eighties, Gladys Knight sightings were not unusual, but always a treat. I remember once seeing her dining with friends in a small restaurant. As she got up to leave every head in the place turned to watch. Seeming to share our pleasure in her presence, she flashed us all her megawatt smile, slipped her black mink coat over her shoulders, and swept out, leaving behind the smell of her perfume and the unmistakable glitter of stardust.
PATTI LABELLE
Born May 24, 1944, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
singer, Grammy Award winner, health activist, author
During a dynamic live performance when “Lady Marmalade” was the number one record in the country Patti LaBelle had herself lowered onto the stage of the Atlanta Civic Center in an explosion of sequins and feathers like a beautiful bird who had just flown in from another galaxy. Those of us lucky enough to be in attendance screamed so loud and long that by the middle of the show, none of us had any voice left. But Patti did.
DR. TONI MORRISON
Born February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio;
author, editor, teacher, recipient of the National Book Award
in 1977, a Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1993
I was already in awe of
The Bluest Eye
when my friend and sister writer Toni Cade Bambara brought Toni Morrison over to my house for dinner. I was so terrified of burning the roast chicken or scorching the bottom of the cornbread that my only memory of the evening is asking her to sign my copy of her novel, and enjoying her pleasure in the French vanilla ice cream we had for dessert. I still have the book.
ROSA PARKS
Born February 4, 1913, Tuskegee, Alabama;
activist, organizer, recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal
of Honor in 1999, “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”
When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated Alabama bus, she sparked a transit boycott that lasted three hundred and eighty-one days and made Montgomery the focal point of the national Civil Rights Movement. I was only eight years old, but the morning the bus company capitulated, my Alabama-born grandfather showed me the headline in delighted disbelief. “If it can happen in Alabama,” he said, “it can happen anywhere.”
LEONTYNE PRICE
Born February 10, 1927, Laurel, Mississippi;
singer, Metropolitan Opera leading lyric soprano,
Grammy Award winner, recipient of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 1964
When I was growing up on the west side of Detroit in the sixties, the music playing in most of the houses on our block was pure Motown. My mother didn't care. She was a fan of Leontyne Price, particularly as the doomed Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's opera
Madama Butterfly.
After a while, my friends got used to the strange music pouring unapologetically from my mother's upstairs window. Although I was a little embarrassed at the time, when I think about real love songs, Miss Price's rendition of “Un Bel Di” is still in my top five.
DELLA REESE
Born July 6, 1931, Detroit, Michigan;
singer, Emmy-nominated television and film actress, talk
show host, recipient of star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Della Reese is one of those people who makes everything she does look effortless. In 1969, when she became the first African American woman with her own prime-time talk and variety show, she opened the door that Oprah Winfrey would step through fifteen years later.
Touched by an Angel
was the name of her long-running television show, but it is also a phrase that could describe her life.
DIANA ROSS
Born March 26, 1944, Detroit, Michigan;
singer, Oscar-nominated film and television actress, author
Essence
magazine, knowing my fear of flying, still asked me to go to Amsterdam to interview Diana Ross as she embarked on an international solo tour. I couldn't say no. The flight was uneventful, and she couldn't have been nicer. Arriving on time, she flipped back her famously extravagant hair, kicked off her five-inch heels, and curled up on the couch for a talk like we were girlfriends. The next night at the concert, when Miss Ross sang her hit song “Muscles,” my normally undemonstrative husband leaped up from his second-row seat and flexed for all he was worth. When she pointed at him from the stage and smiled, I knew he could die a happy man.
NAOMI SIMS
Born March 30, 1949, Oxford, Mississippi;
fashion model, businesswoman, covers of
Ladies' Home
Journal, New York Times Fashions of the Times,
Life Magazine,
and
Cosmopolitan
Breaking down barriers with her style, grace, and brown-skinned beauty, Naomi Sims was the first black model my generation knew by name—the walking, talking embodiment of our slogan “Black is beautiful!” Her picture was on our dorm room bulletin boards right beside pictures of radical activists Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver. When she smiled out at us from the cover of the
Ladies' Home Journal,
we let the revolution rest for a minute and smiled back.
TINA TURNER
Born November 26, 1939, Brownsville, Tennessee;
singer, author, inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1991
If we had seen the pain behind Tina Turner's powerhouse performances with the
Ike and Tina Turner Revue,
I like to believe we would have intervened, called for backup, and spirited our sister out of harm's way. But we didn't know, until she told us everything in her amazing memoir,
I, Tina,
and in songs like “What's Love Got To Do with It?” that said it all. These days, when Tina Turner takes your hands and smiles, there is no bitterness, no regret, no confusion. There is only peace that flows from her like its own kind of music.
