Life
Oprah Winfrey, Harry Belafonte, John Lewis honored by Harvard
Oprah Winfrey delivers acceptance speech during the W.E.B Dubois medal ceremony at Harvard University. PHOTO/Steven Senne/AP
Oprah Winfrey and performer-activist Harry Belafonte were among those honoured at Harvard University on Tuesday at its annual celebration of African American culture.
The Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research presented its annual W.E.B. Du Bois Medals to 8 people at the ceremony.
Other recipients included: British architect David Adjaye; Civil Rights hero U.S. Rep John Lewis; 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen; Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes, and movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
The medal has been awarded since 2000 and is Harvard’s highest honour in the field of African and African American Studies. Winfrey also accepted a posthumous award for author and poet Maya Angelou, whom she has called a mentor.
Rhimes, creator of hit TV shows with black female protagonists, said it should not be so unusual, in this day, to expect characters on television shows to “look like the rest of the world”. In a recent interview with reporters about her new ABC show, “How To Get Away With Murder”, starring Viola Davis as a criminal lawyer and law professor, Rhimes said “Why did it take somebody black to talk about being black?”
Belafonte recalled his days in the civil rights movement with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and actor Paul Robeson. Rep. Lewis, who was presented a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama, was introduced on Tuesday by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
Introducing the other honourees were novelist Jamaica Kincaid, Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard Graduate School of Design Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, and American Repertory Theater’s artistic director Diane Paulus.
