Diahann Carroll

Diahann Carroll was the first Black woman to star in her own network television series in a non-stereotypical role when Julia premiered on NBC in 1968. She played a nurse and single mother — a portrayal so radical for its time that it generated both celebration and controversy. For the first time, American television showed a Black woman who was beautiful, professional, and complex — not a maid, a mammy, or a comic sidekick.

Born Carol Diann Johnson in the Bronx in 1935, Carroll was a prodigy who won the Metropolitan Opera's talent contest at 15 and a television talent show at 18. She attended the High School of Music & Art and New York University before Broadway came calling. She won a Tony Award for No Strings in 1962 — the first Black woman to win for a leading role in a musical — and became one of the most glamorous performers of her era.

Carroll's career spanned six decades, from her 1954 film debut in Carmen Jones to her iconic role as Dominique Deveraux on Dynasty in the 1980s — the first Black character on a prime-time soap opera. She was nominated for an Academy Award, won a Golden Globe, and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. She joined the ancestors in 2019 at 84, having spent a lifetime opening doors that the entertainment industry had kept locked.