Clark Virgil Terry Jr. was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, and a composer and educator.
The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923–1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940). The club operated during the United States' era of Prohibition and Jim Crow era racial segregation. Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Lillie Delk Christian, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the Will Vodery choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Midge Williams, Lena Horne, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham, Bill Robinson, The Nicholas Brothers, Charles 'Honi' Coles, Leonard Reed, Stepin Fetchit, the Berry Brothers, The Four Step Brothers, Jeni Le Gon and Earl Snakehips Tucker.
Courtney Bernard Vance is an American actor. He started his career on stage before moving to film and television. Vance has received various accolades, including a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for a Grammy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award.
Terrance Quinn, known professionally as Terry O'Quinn, is an American actor. He is best known for his Primetime Emmy Award-winning performance of John Locke on the TV series Lost (2004–2010). In film, he is best known for playing the title role in The Stepfather (1987) and Howard Hughes in The Rocketeer (1991), with roles in other films such as Heaven's Gate (1980), Silver Bullet (1985), Young Guns (1988), Blind Fury (1989), Tombstone (1993), and Primal Fear (1996).
Walter Nicks was an African-American modern dancer, choreographer, and teacher of jazz and modern dance. He was a certified master teacher of Katherine Dunham technique. He was professionally active for nearly 60 years.
Andre Keith Braugher was an American actor known for his roles as Detective Frank Pembleton in the NBC police drama series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999) and Captain Raymond Holt in the Fox/NBC police comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013–2021). He won two Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards.
Geoffrey Champion Ward is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 19 books, including 10 companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven Emmy Awards.
William Henry Duke Jr. is an American actor and film director. Known for his physically imposing frame, Duke works primarily in the action and crime drama genres often as a character related to law enforcement. Frequently a character actor, he has starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Predator, and has appeared in films like American Gigolo, No Man's Land, Bird on a Wire, Menace II Society, Exit Wounds, Payback, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Mandy. In television, he is best known as Agent Percy Odell in Black Lightning.
Jazz is a 2001 television documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001 and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Its chronological and thematic episodes provided a history of jazz, emphasizing innovative composers and musicians and American history.
Freida Lee Mock is an American filmmaker, director, screenwriter and producer. She is a co-founder of the American Film Foundation with Terry Sanders. Her documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994) won an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1995.
Britt Woodman was an American jazz trombonist.
Herbert Jefferson Jr., is an American film, television, and stage actor.
Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward.
James Bryant Woode was an American jazz bassist. He played and/or recorded in bands with Flip Phillips, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Nat Pierce, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, Jaki Byard, Earl Hines, Jimmy Witherspoon, Clark Terry and Miles Davis.
Talley Beatty was born in Cedar Grove, Louisiana, a section of Shreveport, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He is considered one of the greatest of African American choreographers, and also bears the titles dancer, doctor, and dance company director. After studying under Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham, Beatty went on do solo work and choreograph his own works which center on the social issues, experiences, and everyday life of African Americans. Beatty and his technique and style of dancing were both praised and criticized by critics and dancers of his day.
Tarik Shah is an African American Muslim with a career as a professional jazz musician. As the sole student of Slam Stewart, Shah began playing the upright bass at age 12 and went on to play with Betty Carter, Ahmad Jamal, Abbey Lincoln and Art Taylor among others. He is a composer, a jazz educator, and lyricist. An expert in martial arts, Mr. Shah was arrested in May 2005 at the age of 42 in New York City, accused and eventually charged with providing aid for terrorist activity based on evidence from an FBI sting. He initially pled not guilty to all charges. After 31 months of solitary confinement, he was convinced a fair trial was unlikely given the Islamophobia following 9-11. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
According to the complaint, both also made a formal oath of loyalty, called a bayat, to al-Qaeda in a meeting with an undercover F.B.I. agent that was secretly recorded. An indictment handed up by a federal grand jury Monday accused the men of conspiring to provide material support for terrorism, specifically for al-Qaeda. It was less than a page long and added no details.
Alfred R. Kelman is an American film and television documentary producer and director best known for his work on The Body Human and the 1984 television version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott.
Charles Burrell is a classical and jazz bass player most prominently known for being the first African-American to be a member of a major American symphony. For this accomplishment he is often referred to as "the Jackie Robinson of Classical Music".
Robin Nicole Hamilton is an American journalist, writer, television host, and principal at "ARoundRobin Production Company". She has worked as a broadcast journalist in Florida, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. She directed the 2015 documentary short film This Little Light of Mine: The Legacy of Fannie Hamer.
Alan Chebot is an American film director and executive producer, born in Fall River, Massachusetts and raised in Somerset, Massachusetts.
