2013 Legends and Living Legacy Awards

Henry Blackwell
Ken Burns
MAY 4, 1825 SEPTEMBER 7, 1909
Henry Browne Blackwell’s tireless work to promote suffrage, his
undying commitment to equality in marriage and his ardent belief in
equal treatment under the law makes him a hero of women’s history.
Blackwell was exposed to progressive ideas through his father, an
abolitionist and sugar refiner, who was a friend of William Lloyd
Garrison and other antislavery leaders. This early exposure led him to
a life spent fighting for suffrage and abolition. Blackwell worked as
an officer of the American Woman Suffrage Association, even serving
as its president in 1880. He also helped to found the Woman’s
Journal, a weekly suffragist newspaper that became the longestrunning suffrage paper in the country. He served as editor from 1893
until his death in 1909.
After hearing Lucy Stone speak at an antislavery meeting,
Blackwell obtained an introduction from abolitionist leader William
Lloyd Garrison. Stone enjoyed his friendship, but she believed
that marriage would be an obstacle to her activism and entail
a loss of personal freedom. However, over several months of
correspondence, the two formulated the characteristics of an ideal
marriage. Blackwell and Stone married in 1855. They included in
their marriage vows a protest against laws of the time, which gave
a husband legal control of his wife, her property and their children.
Stone kept her maiden name, a radical act at the time. Their protest
was published in newspapers all over the country as word of their
unusual ceremony drew both critics and supporters.
True to his word, Blackwell enabled Stone’s work. In addition to
organizing and speaking at her lectures, he proved his worth as a
successful political strategist, traveling with Stone to encourage
state legislatures to give women the vote. Henry Blackwell not only
supported his wife’s activism and work but also fought for the rights
of all women.
Ken Burns will receive the Henry Blackwell Award.
Ken Burns has been making films for more than thirty-five years.
Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Burns
has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed
historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War,
Prohibition and Baseball. The late historian Stephen Ambrose said
of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than
any other source.” His films have won thirteen Emmy Awards and
have had two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, Burns
was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a
Lifetime Achievement Award.
Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. He graduated from
Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1975 and went on
to be one of the co-founders of Florentine Films. Burns has been
the recipient of more than twenty-five honorary degrees and has
delivered many commencement addresses.
Projects currently in production include The Roosevelts: An Intimate
History, as well as films on Jackie Robinson, the Vietnam War and the
history of country music.
In 1999, PBS aired Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This dual biography tells the
story of the two women who almost, by themselves, created and
spearheaded the women’s rights movement in America, changing
for the better the lives of a majority of American citizens. As Bob
Herbert of The New York Times stated: “The latest splendid effort
from...Ken Burns is about two women who barely register in the
consciousness of late-20th century America, but whose lives were
critically important to the freedoms most of us take for granted.”
Not For Ourselves Alone won the prestigious Peabody Award and an
Emmy Award.
Marian Anderson
Denyce Graves
FEBRUARY 27, 1897 APRIL 8, 1993
Marian Anderson’s talent was obvious early on: at age six, she joined
the junior choir at her church and quickly became known as the
“Baby Contralto.” By thirteen, she began receiving invitations to sing
at other churches and began asking for five dollars per performance.
She began touring, especially in Europe, where she encountered less
racial bias than she faced in America. On her return to the United
States, however, Anderson was very well received. She became the
first African American to perform at the White House at the invitation
of the Roosevelts. In 1935 she was offered a contract with Sol Hurok,
whose influence took her fame to new heights. It was Hurok who
attempted to book Anderson at the Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR) in 1939, which famously denied her. Eleanor
Roosevelt stepped in, as did leaders of the NAACP, and Anderson
was booked to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter
Sunday. In 1943, DAR asked her to perform at their Constitution Hall
and she was invited back three more times.
During both World War II and the Korean War, Anderson generously
performed hundreds of concerts for troops and sang at the
inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Her invitations
to sing at prestigious concert halls increased and in 1955, she
became the first black singer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Two years later she was invited to tour Asia as the U.S. State
Department’s Goodwill Ambassador. Shortly thereafter, she was
appointed as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights
Committee and in 1963 sang at the March on Washington.
Her numerous awards include NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1939; the
Medal of Freedom in 1963; the United Nations Peace Prize and the
Congressional Gold Medal, both in 1977; Kennedy Center Honors in
1978; the George Peabody Medal in 1981; the National Medal of Arts
in 1986; and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991.
Denyce Graves will receive the Marian Anderson Living Legacy
Award for her achievements in music.
A world-renowned opera singer and a native Washingtonian, Denyce
Graves made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1995-96
season in the title role of Carmen. Her impressive repertoire includes
the lead roles in Samson et Dalila, Hansel and Gretel, Cosi Fan Tutti,
and many others. She has performed opposite the likes of Plácido
Domingo, Roberto Alagna and Sherrill Milnes at the world’s most
acclaimed opera houses around the world. She sang the “American
Anthem” during the 55th Presidential Inauguration and sang at the
Washington National Cathedral during a national memorial service
for the victims of 9/11 on September 14, 2001.
Graves graduated from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in 1981.
She studied voice at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the New
England Conservatory.
Recognized worldwide as one of today’s most exciting vocal stars,
Denyce Graves continues to gather unparalleled popular and critical
acclaim in performances on four continents. Ms. Graves’s 2012-13
season includes two world premieres; she creates the roles of Mrs.
Miller in Minnesota Opera’s New Works Initiative commission of
Doubt and Emelda in Champion at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
The season also marks two role debuts for Ms. Graves as Herodias
in Strauss’s Salome at Palm Beach Opera, and Katisha in Gilbert and
Sullivan’s The Mikado with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
USA Today identifies her as “an operatic superstar of the 21st
Century,” and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution exclaims, “if the
human voice has the power to move you, you will be touched by
Denyce Graves.”
Dr. Helen Taussig
Etta Pisano, MD
MAY 24, 1898 MAY 21, 1986
Dr. Helen Taussig’s mother died while she was still a child, however
Taussig seemed to inherit her mother’s interest in natural sciences
and botany. Her father was supportive, tutoring her extensively as
she dealt with dyslexia and encouraging her career in the sciences.
She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1921
and then received her MD from Johns Hopkins in 1927.
She then began an internship in pediatric cardiology. In 1930 she
was named assistant professor at Johns Hopkins; that same year,
Taussig suffered a complete hearing loss and learned to “listen” to
heartbeats using her hands. By 1931, she was named the head of the
Pediatric Cardiac Clinic of the Harriet Lane Home. During this time,
she focused her attention on a birth defect known as “blue baby
syndrome,” a condition in which an infant’s heart does not circulate
enough blood to the lungs. Taussig theorized that “if the blood
could be rerouted past the heart’s defective area through an artificial
passage, the blood would be shunted into the lung.”
In 1943, she approached Dr. Alfred Blalock, chair of the Johns
Hopkins Department of Surgery, and together with his assistant
Vivien Thomas, created a new surgical procedure to either repair
the damaged artery or attach a new one. The following year, the
first surgery was performed on a human patient with success. The
operation, known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt, was performed
on thousands of children. Although no longer used, the treatment
revolutionized the field of pediatric cardiology.
Taussig continued to teach and was named full professor at Johns
Hopkins in 1962. She was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1963. In 1965, she was elected president of the American
Heart Association. As she aged, Taussig kept busy. Forty-one of
her one hundred published medical papers were written after her
retirement.
Dr. Etta Pisano will receive the Dr. Helen Taussig Living Legacy
Award for her achievements in the field of medicine.
Dr. Etta Pisano was born in New York City and was raised in the
suburbs of Philadelphia. After graduating from Duke University’s
Medical School, she completed her radiology residency at Beth Israel
Hospital of Harvard Medical School. She is an expert in breast cancer
imaging and served as the Chief of Breast Imaging at University
North Carolina Hospitals for 16 years. Dr. Pisano currently serves
as Vice President for Medical Affairs and Dean of the College of
Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).
Dr. Pisano served as the Principal Investigator of the largest clinical
trial ever run by a radiologist, the Digital Mammographic Imaging
Screening Trial (DMIST), which enrolled 49,528 women in a study
comparing digital to film mammography, the results of which
were published in 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Recently she co-founded her own company, NextRay, Inc, which
will commercialize a device she and the other cofounders invented,
a technology which creates medical images using x-rays through
diffraction enhanced imaging that provides superior image quality
at a dose substantially lower than is currently available. This will be
most important to children and young adults, and young women
undergoing breast cancer screenings.
Dr. Pisano is a recipient of the Gold Medal from the Association
of University Radiologists (2010) and the American Roentgen Ray
Society (2012), the Alice Ettinger Distinguished Achievement Award
from the American Association for Women Radiologists (2012) and
was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National
Academy of Sciences in 2008.
Lena Horne
Phylicia Rashad
JUNE 30, 1917 MAY 9, 2010
Lena Horne began her career at the age of sixteen as a chorus girl at
Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. After a few years, she left to join the
Noble Sissle Society Orchestra and then moved from club to club,
eventually landing at the Café Society nightclub. After a feature in
Life magazine, she quickly landed a contract with MGM in 1942,
becoming the first African American performer to sign a contract
with a major Hollywood studio.
Her contract was unique in that it stated that Horne would not play
the role of a maid or any other stereotypical role. However, Horne’s
light skin prevented her from playing African American roles and
she was deemed too dark to convincingly play white roles. She was
barely utilized in most films, usually singing only a song or two,
which were later cut from screenings in the South. She had more
success in all-black films, such as 1943’s Cabin in the Sky and 1946’s
Stormy Weather.
In addition to her burgeoning film and music careers, Horne was a
passionate activist. She performed in a USO tour during World War
II but was removed after commenting on the treatment of black
soldiers. She then used her own money to continue to perform for
the troops, while refusing to sing for segregated audiences. Horne
worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws, as well as
participated in NAACP rallies and the March on Washington. During
the 1950s, she was blacklisted from Hollywood due to her political
views.
Horne returned to a focus on music in the latter half of her career
and in 1981 returned to Broadway with Lena Horne: A Lady and her
Music. The one-woman show earned her two Grammys and a Tony
Award. In 1994 she performed one of her last concerts at the Supper
Club. A recording of that performance earned her another Grammy
for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
Phylicia Rashad will receive the Lena Horne Living Legacy Award
for her accomplishments in the performing arts.
Phylicia Rashad is an American Tony Award winning actress, teacher
and singer. A native of Houston, Texas, Rashad graduated Magna
Cum Laude from Howard University. She became a household name
when she portrayed Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show, a character
whose appeal has earned her numerous honors and awards for
over two decades. She teamed up with Bill Cosby in later years on
television as Ruth Lucas on Cosby.
While television was a catalyst in the rise of Rashad’s career, she has
also been a force on the stage, appearing both on and off-Broadway,
often in projects that showcase her musical talent such as Jelly’s Last
Jam, Into The Woods, Dreamgirls and The Wiz. She has performed
in numerous roles on Broadway including Violet Weston in August
Osage County, Big Mama in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof (a role that she reprised on the London Stage), Aunt Ester in
August Wilson’s Gem Of The Ocean, (Tony Award nomination) and
Queen Britannia in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline at Lincoln Center. Ms.
Rashad received both the Drama Desk and the Tony Award for Best
Actress in a Play for her riveting performance as Lena Younger in the
Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun. She
also teaches Master classes at learning institutions such as Howard
University, Julliard, and Carnegie Mellon.
Among the awards that decorate Rashad’s walls and shelves are the
Texas Medal of Arts, the National Council of Negro Women’s Dorothy
L. Height Dreammaker Award, AFTRA’s AMEE Award for Excellence
in Entertainment, the Board of Directors of New York Women
In Film and Television’s Muse Award for Outstanding Vision and
Achievement, Dallas Women In Film Topaz Award, Peoples’ Choice
Awards, several NAACP Image Awards, and the Pan African Film
Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.