She sang with the Metropolitan Opera for decades, often on short notice, including after lodging a successful age discrimination complaint against the company.
A champion of Black artists, she explored themes of race, gender, class, family and community through a vast array of media and later the written word.
He wrote more than 100 symphonic, choral, solo instrumental and chamber works. But he was better known, and celebrated, as a musical parodist. Who can forget the ���Concerto for Horn and Hardart���?
One of the world���s most visible public faces in the war on breast cancer, she helped reshape both the doctor���s role and the patient���s.
She accused Emmett, 14, of accosting her, and her testimony led to the acquittals of her husband and his half brother in a murder that helped galvanize the civil rights movement.