Explore the life and legacy of notable Black scholar and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois. From his birth, just five years after the Emancipation Proclamation; to his death, on the eve of the March on Washington in 1963, his legacy as an activist continues ...
From swing to bebop to free jazz, Sun Ra bridged myriad musical styles to create a singular avant-garde sound, and with his ever-evolving collective, the Sun Ra Arkestra, he pushed the boundaries of jazz, becoming one of the first Black artists to have his own ...
Author, educator and humanitarian Elie Wiesel was born in Romania and was deported to Auschwitz with his family as a teenager. Upon his liberation, he migrated to France before moving to New York, and ended up writing 57 books in his lifetime. He won the ...
Dick Van Dyke's career has spanned almost eight decades across stage, television, and film. His journey into show business started with touring as half of the comedy duo The Merry Mutes, then going on to co-anchor "The CBS Morning Show" with Walter Cronkite, before becoming ...
In 1987, at the age of just 21, Marlee Matlin shattered expectations as the first Deaf actor to win an Academy Award for her groundbreaking performance in "Children of a Lesser God." Catapulted into the spotlight, she seized the moment to challenge an industry unprepared ...
Marcella Hazan lived an improbably eventful life. An immigrant woman trained as a scientist, she never set foot in a kitchen until she married and moved to America in the 1950s. A childhood injury had left her with an injured right arm, a challenge for ...
Hannah Arendt was a German-born political theorist and philosopher best known for her influential works on totalitarianism, authority and the nature of evil. Forced to flee Nazi Germany as a Jewish refugee, her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II informed ...
Singer-songwriter Janis Ian evolved from a precocious young talent to an influential figure in the music industry and an advocate for social justice. Born in 1951 to a politically active Jewish family in New Jersey, Ian grew up in an environment rich with social consciousness ...
Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, about his parents’ survival of the Holocaust, has had an immense impact on the world of comics throughout his career. A gifted artist since he was a young child in Queens, New York, ...
“I was born, and they took a picture,” says Liza Minnelli, expressing the reality of growing up in the flashbulb-popping, gossip-saturated spotlight as Hollywood royalty—as the daughter of Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli and screen icon Judy Garland. Liza sought out extraordinary mentors—like Kay Thompson, Fred ...
