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Sidney Poitier - Oscar Firsts
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Bahamian-American actor Sidney Poitier had several firsts over his storied career. He was the first Black actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for "The Defiant Ones", later becoming the first to win the award for "Lilies Of The Field" in 1964. Poitier was also part of cinema's first interracial kiss in the 1965 hit "A Patch Of Blue".
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Zendaya - Youngest 'Drama Actress' Emmy Winner
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Zendaya made history in 2020 as the youngest woman to ever win the coveted Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series for her turn in "Euphoria".
"This is pretty crazy!" Zendaya, who was 24 at the time, exclaimed during her acceptance speech, which was filmed at home during the COVID pandemic. "This feels like a really weird time to be celebrating. There is hope in the young people out there… to all my peers out there doing the work, I see you I admire you… thank you."
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Count Basie & Ella Fitzgerald – First Grammy Winners
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The Grammys have recognized Black musicians since the very first awards ceremony in 1959 when Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald became the first African-American winners. While there have been many firsts across Grammy categories for Black performers, 60 years after the first ceremony, Cardi B broke barriers to become the first-ever female solo artist to win Best Rap Album.
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Quincy Jones And Jay-Z – Most Grammy Nominations
Talk about Black excellence. Prolific music producer Quincy Jones and Jay-Z are tied as the most-nominated people in Grammy history with 80 Grammy nominations to date. Just behind them in Beyonce with 79. She also holds the record as the most-nominated female artist.
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Whoopi Goldberg – First Black EGOT Winner
The multi-talented Whoopi Goldberg became the very first Black member of the very exclusive EGOT winners club in 2002. With a Grammy for her 1986 comedy album, and Oscar for “Ghost” in 1990 she earned membership in the exclusive EGOT club by winning Tony for producing “Thoroughly Modern Milly” and an Emmy for her performance in "Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel” in the same year.
In 2016 John Legend became the first Black man to reach EGOT status. As of 2020, there are only 16 EGOT winners.
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Harry Belafonte – A Man Of Many Firsts
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The barrier-breaking Harry Belafonte was the first to reach many historic achievements including becoming the first solo artist to sell one million records for his 1956 album “Calypso”. 1956 also marked the year he and Sammy Davis Jr. became the first Black Emmy nominees. In 1960 he would become the first Black Emmy winner for his variety special “Tonight with Belafonte”.
He is also the first Black male performer to win a Tony Award for Best Actor. The win came four years after Juanita Hall was the first-ever African-American winner of a Tony in 1950.
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Ethel Waters – Barrier-Breaker
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Singer and actress Ethel Waters claimed many firsts over the course of her career including being the first Black woman to appear on radio in 1922, the first to star in a commercial radio program in 1933, and in 1939, she was the first Black singer to appear on her own television show, “The Ethel Waters Show” and the first Black woman to star in a Broadway play. In 1962 she became the first Black performer to earn an Emmy nomination.
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Gail Fisher – TV Firsts
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Actress Gail Fisher had a lot of firsts over her career. For her role as Peggy Fair in detective series “Mannix”, Fisher became the first Black woman to win the Emmy for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama and the first Black actress to win a Golden Globe in 1971 when she and Flip Wilson became the first Black winners in the Television categories. Fisher would also go on to win a second Golden Globe for “Mannix” in 1973.
A former cheerleader and beauty queen, Fisher was also the first Black actor with a speaking part to appear in a national commercial. The ad for All laundry detergent aired on TV in the early 1960s.
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Tyra Banks – First Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Cover
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In 1996 Tyra Banks broke barriers as the first Black woman on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s coveted Swimsuit Issue. She repeated the honour in 1997.
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Tyler Perry – First Studio Owner
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Is there anything Tyler Perry can’t do? The actor, writer, director, and producer is the first African-American to own his own production studio. The largest studio in the U.S. with 12 soundstages named after Black entertainers, the 330-acre Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta was once home to a Confederate Army Base. While accepting the BET Ultimate Icon Award in 2018 the significance of the location was highlighted by Perry in his acceptance speech, saying, "The studio was once a Confederate Army Base and I want you to hear this, which meant that there was Confederate soldiers on that base, plotting and planning on how to keep 3.9 million negros enslaved. Now that land is owned by one negro."
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Oprah – Everything
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Oprah Winfrey’s achievements know no bounds. Of the many ground-breaking firsts attributed to Winfrey are: the first Black woman to anchor a nightly news program in Nashville, the first Black woman to receive the Humanitarian awards at the Oscars and the Emmys, the first Black woman to run her own studio, and the first Black female producer to score a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards for her work on “Selma”.
Oh yeah, she's also one of the first Black multi-millionaires.
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Hattie McDaniel – First Oscar Nominee & Winner
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As controversial as 1939’s “Gone With The Wind” is today, the film gave Hollywood a historic moment with Hattie McDaniels’ supporting performance. McDaniels became not only the first Black performer to be nominated for an Academy Award, but the first to win. It would take another 24 years until a second Black actor would take home an Oscar with Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black man to be nominated and to win the Best Actor trophy for “Lilies Of The Field”.
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Halle Berry – First Best Actress Winner
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It was a much longer wait between the first Black Best Actress nomination and win. Dorothy Dandridge was nominated in the category in 1954 for “Carmen Jones” but it wasn’t until 2002 that a Black actress would be crowned the winner. For her role in “Monster’s Ball”, Halle Berry became the first African-American actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
"This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox," Berry said in her acceptance speech. "And it's for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."
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John Singleton – First Best Director Nominee
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The late John Singleton was the first Black filmmaker to nab a nomination for “Boyz N The Hood” in 1991 and at age 24, remains the youngest person to ever be nominated in the category. Though there’s only been six Black directors nominated in the category, four have received a nomination in the past decade including Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and Steve McQueen.
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Vanessa Williams – First Miss America
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As the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams’ reign didn’t last long after nude photos of her surfaced. The 1984 crown was passed to the runner-up Suzette Charles, who was also a Black woman. Thirty-two years later, Miss America CEO Sam Haskell issued a public apology to Williams for stripping her of her title – the same year she served as the competition’s head judge.
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Shonda Rhimes – Highest-Paid Showrunner
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“Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes is the highest-paid showrunner in Hollywood thanks to her multi-million dollar deal with Netflix. The undisclosed salary is reportedly north of the $400 million mark. With “Grey’s”, “Scandal” and “How To get Away With Murder”, Rhimes is also the only Black woman to create and produce three TV series in the weekly ratings top 10.
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Nat King Cole – First TV Host
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Debuting in 1956, “The Nat King Cole Show” made Nat King Cole the first-ever Black network television host. When the show was cancelled after one season due to lack of sponsorship, Cole quipped, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark." Thirty-three years later, Arsenio Hall had the honour of being late night’s first Black host.
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Robert L. Johnson and Sheila Johnson - First Black Billionaires
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When Robert L. Johnson and then-wife Sheila Johnson launched BET in 1980, it was a weekly two-hour block of Black-oriented programming on Nickelodeon. Three years later, BET became the first TV network aimed at an African-American audience. When they sold BET to Viacom, the Johnsons became the first Black billionaires in the U.S. in 2001.
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