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Legends Wall

Betty White (January 17, 1922 – December 31, 2021) was a prominent radio, film and television actress, comedian and vocal advocate promoting rights for women in the entertainment industry. She was known as the “First Lady of Television” and was made an honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1955. Her career spanned seven decades with work both in front of and behind the camera. She was the first woman to receive the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host in 1983. Credited with endless energy and enthusiasm, White earned a Guinness World Record for “Longest TV career by a female entertainer” in both 2014 and 2018. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three SAG and American Comedy Awards each, and a Grammy. Ms. White was born in Oak Park, Illinois and moved to California at the age of 1. She was an entertainer almost all her life beginning with writing and starring in her first play during her high school years. During WWII she entered the American Women’s Voluntary Services and was assigned to drive a military supply truck to the Hollywood Hills during the war.

Mister Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) born Fred McFeely Rogers in Latrobe, Pennsylvania worked as an author, Presbyterian minister and most-famously as a TV host and producer. Mister Rogers created the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood children’s show which became the most famous children’s television program of its day in the United States running continuously from the late 1960s until 2001. In the show, Rogers used his skills as a voice actor, singer, puppeteer, director, and producer to engage the eyes and minds of children on topics related to emotional and physical concerns involved with friendship, family, school, death, siblings, parents, pets, marriage, divorce, adult working lives, stress and positive mental states. Mister Rogers received numerous awards in his lifetime for his work, including: the Presidential media of Freedom, a Lifetime Emmy, 40 honorary degrees and induction into the Television Hall of Fame.

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) graduated from high school and immediately moved to New York City where she spent the rest of her life working as an outspoken gay liberation activist, and self-identified drag queen. Johnson also worked as a model for Andy Warhol, a drag performer, and an AIDS activist. Her body was found floating in the Hudson River; the cause of her sudden death in 1992 has yet to reach closure. Johnson was a founding member of several gay rights organizations and is the first openly LGBT person to have a state park named in her honor in New York. Spending a portion of her life homeless in the 60s, Johnson was frequently arrested, harassed and subjected to emotional mistreatment all while lobbying for respect and recognition for those in her community who were often voiceless. In the year of her death, she was quoted as saying, “How many years does it take for people to see that we're all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race? I mean how many years does it take for people to see that we're all in this rat race together.”

Sitting Bull (c. 1831 – December 15, 1890) was a leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota people indigenous to the United States of America before the arrival of permanent European settlers. Known in 1930 as “Supreme Chief of the whole Sioux Nation”, Sitting Bull led Indian resistance against US government policies. Known for leading his people during the Great Sioux War of 1876, Sitting Bull fought for independence and against railway expansion through Hunkpapa lands. Gold was discovered in his people’s land leading to more battles stemming from encroaching colonization. Sitting Bull’s people were victorious over Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn led into battle by Crazy Horse. After many more conflicts for sovereignty, mineral rights, cultural preservation and business prospecting between numerous indigenous tribes and the US Government, Sitting Bull moved with his people into what is now Saskatchewan, Canada. For four years, he organized and settled his people in this region before eventually returning with some of his members back to the US facing arrest, and forced relocation to reservations.

Dolores Huerta (April 10, 1930) was born in the mining town of Dawson, Mexico. She is known as an American labor leader and civil rights activist. In 1965 she helped organize the Delano grape strike in California resulting in the drafting of a workers’ contract created as a result of the insistence of laborers for change in their working conditions. Huerta went on to found what is now known as the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) receiving numerous awards for her community service, and advocacy for women’s and immigrant workers’ rights. She is credited with creating the phrase, “Si Se Puede” as a motto for the UFW, and as a guiding principle used by many activist groups as a clarion call to inspire the accomplishment of their goals. Huerta is a winner of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Huerta worked as an elementary school teacher before leaving the profession to pursue a lifelong crusade to correct economic injustice.

James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was born in New York City and lived most of his later life in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. He was a writer who gained fame as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Baldwin was also a well-known public figure whose speeches and debates can be found on numerous online sources today. In 1974 he wrote the novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 2018. Most of Baldwin’s work used fiction to explain complex social dynamics around the topics of class, race, sexuality, and gender. His first novel was Go Tell It on the Mountain which Time Magazine included as one of its top 100 English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. The topics of social and self-acceptance for black, and gay and bisexual men feature prominently in his literature. Overall, his work is credited as running in parallel to major political movements of his time which still bleed into today’s continued work for equality and inclusion.

Chloe Zhao (March 31, 1982) is a Chinese filmmaker born in Beijing with over 34 awards for directing, 13 for screenplay and 9 for editing making her the most awarded person within a single film awards season in the modern era. She is the first woman of color to win an Academy Award for Best Director which came for her film Nomadland in 2020—a film about nomadic workers who have no permanent homes. The film has yet to be released in her home country of China. As a teenager, she states she was drawing manga-influenced comics and writing fan fiction. In 2018, she was hired to direct Marvel Studios’ Eternals which was subsequently not released in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. After spending her youth in China in the 80s and 90s, she moved to California to finish high school. It is now her home where her award-winning work can be freely produced and shown.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (July 6, 1907 – 13 July, 13 1954) spent most of her life in her hometown of Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico. Using her paintings to explore questions of postcolonialism, class, race, gender and identity in Mexican society, Kahlo became known for her many portraits and self-portraits. Kahlo was part of the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement seeking to distinguish Mexican identity with respect to the indigenous traditions of the Aztecs. Lifelong pain and medical problems from an auto accident turned Kahlo’s goal from being a doctor toward creating art. She eventually met her future husband, and fellow Mexican artist, Diego Rivera and joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927. Her first solo exhibition was in 1938 in NYC and was successful enough to earn her a showing in Paris where the Louvre purchased one of her works making her the first Mexican artist in their collection. Rediscovery of her works in the 70s followed by popularization in the 90s led Kahlo to become an icon for feminism, Chicanos, and the LGBTQ+ community. Her art style is derived from Mexican folk culture combined with Colombian and Catholic influences as part of the Surrealist and Magic Realism art movement.

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