ella fitzgerald presidential medal of freedom.

Simone Leigh Simone Leigh (© Andrew Toth/Getty Images) She was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995. While Dove was a renaissance woman of the literary world - writing novels, plays, short stories and literary criticism - her poetry gained international attention. It’s like a bouillon cube: You carry it around and then it nourishes you when you need it,” said then–U.S. “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. Rita Dove Rita Dove (© Michael Dwyer/AP Images) Among her scores of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for her novel Beloved. The book was also named the New York Times’ best book of the past 25 years in 2006. Before becoming a professor at Princeton University, she was the first Black woman senior editor in the fiction department at Random House.

Toni Morrison revolutionized the way Black women’s inner lives are portrayed in fiction and nonfiction. Toni Morrison Toni Morrison (© Michel Euler/AP Images) Fitzgerald was also the first Black woman to win a Grammy Award and went on to win 13 more.

The “Queen of Jazz” not only made her debut at the tender age of 17 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, but she went on to become a legend worldwide for her sliding vocal range and prolific output of recordings. Ella Fitzgerald Ella Fitzgerald (© AP Images)Įlla Fitzgerald is synonymous with American jazz. These five trailblazers transformed and elevated American culture, leaving their mark on the national - and international - stage.

Ella fitzgerald presidential medal of freedom.