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Kids learn about the biography of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice who argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education for the NAACP.

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Facts about Thurgood Marshall

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Thurgood Marshall for Kids | Supreme Court Justice and Civil Rights Leader

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Barack Hussein Obama II ( /b ə ˈ r ɑː k h uː ˈ s eɪ n oʊ ˈ b ɑː m ə / i ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician. He was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African-American to hold the office. Before becoming president, he was a U.S. senator from Illinois and served from 2005 to 2008. He is a Democrat.

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He married Michelle Robinson in 1992. They have two daughters.

Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 as the first African American mixed-race president. As president, he slowly ended US participation in the Iraq War, having prepared the country to defend itself. The al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was in office. Also, he contributed to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often called "Obamacare") which changed many health care laws. He also enacted many acts to create public works jobs to help the economy. He became the first president to openly express support for gay marriage, and proposed gun control as a result of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Obama left office in January 2017 and was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump. He now lives in Washington, D.C. He is ranked very high in presidential opinion polls.

Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children (called Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in 1961) in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the first President to have been born in Hawaii. His father was a black exchange student from Kenya named Barack Obama Sr. He died in a motorcycle accident in Kenya in 1982. His mother was a white woman from Kansas named Ann Dunham, who was an anthropologist and died in 1995. He spent most of his childhood in Hawaii and Chicago, Illinois, although he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from age 6 to age 10. He later moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

He started college at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and graduated from Columbia University in New York City. After taking time off as a community organizer, Obama went to law school at Harvard University. After law school, Obama worked for a law firm in Hyde Park, Chicago.

Obama has been married to Michelle Obama since 1992. She has a law degree from Harvard Law School. She worked as a lawyer. They have two daughters, Malia Ann, who was born in 1998 and Natasha ("Sasha"), born in 2001. They were born at University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago. They lived in Chicago, but moved into the White House on January 20, 2009.

Obama has a half sister who is a teacher in Hawaii. His father died from a car accident in Kenya. His mother died of ovarian cancer. His maternal grandmother died just before Obama won the election to become President.

Before becoming president

Obama worked for Alice Palmer, an Illinois state senator. In 1995 she chose not to run for re-election so that she could run for U.S. Congress, and Obama decided to run for her Illinois state senate seat. Palmer lost her election for U.S. Congress, so she tried to keep her seat in the state senate, but she did not have enough time to meet the rules of the election. Obama's team said that she could not be on the ballot, and the election rulemakers agreed. Obama won the election and became an Illinois state senator. He was state senator from 1997 to 2004.

While he was Illinois state senator, he wrote a law that required police to keep records on the race of people they stopped. The law that he wrote also forced police to videotape when they talked to people they suspect of murder. He taught law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School. Judge and political teacher Abner J. Mikva taught Obama politics and became his mentor. During his early political career, Obama would make appearances and debate on Chicago Tonight.

Obama ran for the U.S. Senate. While running for Senate, John Kerry asked him to speak at the Democratic National Convention. He spoke on television. He was a U.S. Senator from 2005 to 2008.

Obama won the presidential election of 2008.

Presidential campaigns

2008 presidential campaign

Obama's presidential campaign for the White House started in early June 2008 when he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton was favored to win but Obama won many smaller state caucuses (local party elections) by having a lot of volunteers. He decided not to accept government money for his campaign so that he could accept more private money under Campaign finance reform in the United States. He raised the most amount of money ever for a presidential campaign.

Obama's campaign theme was that he was a man of hope and change. He was also against the war in Iraq. He was in favor of giving money to American car companies. He was in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

During the campaign, some people said that Obama's friends were Tony Rezko, a landlord, and former revolutionary Bill Ayers; Obama said that they were not his friends. Obama also had trouble when his minister at church, Jeremiah Wright, was videotaped criticizing America. During the campaign, Obama said that his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, was just like George W. Bush, something that John McCain said was not true. He ran with Joe Biden as his candidate for Vice President.

He defeated McCain in the election on November 4 by a wide electoral majority of 365 to 173, meaning that he won the most votes in enough states to send 365 people to officially elect him. The popular vote (based on the total number of votes across the country) was closer, with Obama winning 53%, McCain 46%.

2012 presidential campaign

Obama announced he was running for president again in April 2011 when he posted a video on his website. Because he was already the president, there were very few other Democrats who tried to oppose him. He won the democratic nomination easily. Their opponents in the Republican party this time were Mitt Romney, who was running for president, and Paul Ryan, who was running for vice president.

In the election on November 6, Obama and Joe Biden defeated Romney and Ryan by a majority of 332 to 206 electoral votes. This meant that, even though it was still large, his majority was smaller than in 2008. In terms of the popular vote, Obama won 51.1% and Romney won 47.2%.

Presidency (2009-2017)

First term (2009-13)

Obama was first sworn in as president on January 20, 2009.

Great Recession

He continued the financial bailout that George W. Bush started, giving billions of dollars to car companies and banks so that they would not go bankrupt. He signed an act written by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd which would regulate Wall Street (the financial industry) to try to prevent another recession like this from happening again.

Nobel Peace Prize

Obama received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009. He noted that his efforts were humble, but he donated the prize money to several charities.

Tea Party movement

Though his popularity was very high (around 70% approval) when he entered office, his approval ratings fell to 45% percent during the year of 2010. He received much criticism from Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and members of the Tea Party because they believe that the federal government is becoming too big and spending too much money and that his programs are not the best for the country.

Obama made a plan to slowly withdraw troops from Iraq, ending the War in Iraq by the end of 2011, while adding more troops to Afghanistan to help the United States win the War in Afghanistan. He also decided that the United States should help in the war against Libya. He has said several times that he wants to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Obama reduced US participation in the Iraq War and continued the war on terror which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. Obama started a no-fly-zone policy on the Libyan civil war that ended in October 2011 with the killing of Muammar al-Gaddafi.

Economic policy

With rising economic deficits (the amount of money the government borrows each month) under his administration, he called for taxes to be increased on the rich. He criticized his Republican opponents for wanting to cut welfare benefits for the poor rather than raising taxes to help pay down the debt.

LGBT rights

He signed the Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 in 2010, allowing openly gay men and openly lesbian women in the armed forces. On May 9, 2012, he became the first sitting US President to openly support legalizing same-sex marriage.

Gun control

Before his second term began, there has been debating of guns because of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that happened on December 14, 2012, as well as shootings in the past.

2012 re-election campaign

On April 4, 2011 Obama said that he would run for re-election for a second term in 2012 in a video titled "It Begins with Us" that he posted on his website and filed election papers with the Federal Election Commission. He was officially nominated as his party's nominee on September 6, 2012. Mitt Romney was officially nominated as his opponent by the Republican party on August 30, 2012. While the election results were very close, Obama easily won the electoral college votes he needed to win a second term. Obama and Romney spent more than $2 billion on advertising during the election campaign.

On December 21, 2012, Obama nominated John Kerry for United States Secretary of State during his second term. Kerry was sworn in on February 1, 2013.

Second term (2013-17)

Main article: Second inauguration of Barack Obama

Obama was inaugurated for a second term privately (only his family members could see) on January 20, 2013, at the White House. The next day, January 21, 2013, he was inaugurated again, this time in public, at the United States Capitol. This was because January 20, 2013, was on a Sunday.

The start of his second term in 2013 had a few setbacks. With the NSA, people were upset at the Obama administration that the government was possibly listening to their phone calls. His party (the Democrats) also lost the Congressional elections. Because of disagreements between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, neither side was getting anything done and Obama resulted in using his Executive Order (his power as president) to help reform things like the immigration system.

He visited South Africa in late June 2013. Prior to visiting South Africa, he visited Senegal. He visited Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned. He did not meet with Nelson Mandela.

2013 United States federal government shutdown

The United States government shutdown occurred on October 1, 2013. On October 17, 2013, Obama signed a bill that ended the United States government shut down.

Presidential Medals of Freedom

Obama awarded several people, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton and media mogul Oprah Winfrey for the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 20, 2013. He has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to many people, such as Stephen Hawking, Sandra Day O'Connor, Chita Rivera, Loretta Lynn and George H. W. Bush.

Death of Nelson Mandela

Minimum wage and college

He supported increasing the minimum wage, requiring women to be paid the same as men at the same job, and has called for the first 2 years of college to be fully government-funded for students who study full-time and get good grades.

Legalization of same-sex marriage

Obama supported LGBT members, and successfully convinced the courts in 2015 that same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States.

Climate change

Obama was also concerned about climate change, and promoted the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court

Post-presidency (2017-present)

As it is not possible for a person to be president for three terms, Obama could not run for president again. He was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump in early 2017. He left office with a 60% approval rating.

Even though he is not the president anymore, Obama still owns a house in Washington, D.C.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, spend time making speeches and attending events. They also run a charity called the Obama Foundation, and own Higher Ground Productions, a company which makes movies. The company was hired by Netflix to make documentaries. One of their documentaries, American Factory, won an Academy Award for being the best documentary of 2019.

He released his presidential memoir, A Promised Land, on November 17, 2020.

In May 2020, Obama criticized President Trump for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that it is "an absolute chaotic disaster".

Obama wrote a presidential memoir, in a $65million deal with Penguin Random House. The book, A Promised Land, was released on November 17, 2020.

In February 2021, Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen started a podcast called Renegades: Born in the USA where the two talk about "their backgrounds, music and their 'enduring love of America.'" In late 2021, Regina Hicks had signed a deal with Netflix, in a venture with his and Michelle's Higher Ground to develop comedy projects. On March 4, 2022, Obama won an Audio Publishers Association (APA) Award in the best narration by the author category for the narration of his memoir A Promised Land.

On April 5, 2022, Obama visited the White House for the first time since leaving office, in an event celebrating the 12th annual anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act.

In 2022, he narrated the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks, which later won him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator.

In June 2022, it was announced that the Obamas and their podcast production company, Higher Ground, signed a multi-year deal with Audible.

In September 2022, Obama visited the White House to unveil his and Michelle's official White House portraits.

In Spanish: Barack Obama para niños

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Kid President meets the President of the United States of America

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YES WE CAN - New Approaches - Entertainment - EMMY WINNER

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Kids learn about the biography of Colin Powell, the first African-American U.S. secreatary of state. A general and diplomat who led during the Persian Gulf War.

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Fresberg Cartoon – Learning & History for Students

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Who is Colin Powell? Watch our Top 10 Facts video to see | Black History Cartoon

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Biography: Booker T. Washington for Kids

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Kids learn about the biography of Booker T. Washington, educator and civil rights leader who opened the Tuskegee college for African Americans.

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The Story of Martin Luther King Jr. by Kid President

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A hero is born

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929. At the time in that part of the country, segregation-or the separation of races in places like schools, buses, and restaurants-was the law. He experienced racial predjudice from the time he was very young, which inspired him to dedicate his life to achieving equality and justice for Americans of all colors. King believed that peaceful refusal to obey unjust law was the best way to bring about social change.

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Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., never backed down in his stand against racism. Learn more about the life of this courageous hero who inspired millions of people to right a historical wrong.

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Frederick Douglass for Kids | American History Lesson

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Kids learn about the biography of Frederick Douglass an enslaved person who taught himself to read and then became a leader in fighting for the civil rights of African-Americans and women.

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A Picture Book of Jesse Owens Read Aloud

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Jackie Robinson Facts For Kids | The US Baseball Player

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Jackie Robinson was an African-American baseball player. He was the first black-American who played in Major League Baseball (MLB). After Bing Cosby, he stood at second position as the most famous …

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Biography

Go here to watch avideo about George Washington Carver.

George Washington Carver by Arthur Rothstein

Occupation: Scientist and educator

Born: January 1864 in Diamond Grove, Missouri

Died: January 5, 1943 in Tuskegee, Alabama

Best known for: Discovering many ways to use the peanut

Biography:

Where did George grow up?

George was born in 1864 on a small farm in Diamond Grove, Missouri. His mother Mary was a slave owned by Moses and Susan Carver. One night slave raiders came and stole George and Mary from the Carvers. Moses Carver went searching for them, but only found George left by the side of the road.

George was raised by the Carvers. Slavery had been abolished by the13th amendment and the Carvers had no children of their own. They took care of George and his brother James like their own children teaching them to read and write.

Growing up George liked to learn about things. He was especially interested in animals and plants. He also liked to read the Bible.

Going to School

George wanted to go to school and learn more. However, there weren't any schools for black children close enough to home for him to attend. George ended up traveling around the midwest in order to go to school. He eventually graduated from high school in Minneapolis, Kansas.

George enjoyed science and art. He initially thought he may want to be an artist. He took some art classes at Simpson College in Iowa where he really enjoyed drawing plants. A teacher of his suggested he combine his love for science, art, and plants and study to become a botanist. A botanist is a scientist that studies plants.

George enrolled in Iowa State to study botany. He was the first African-American student at Iowa State. After earning a bachelor's degree in science, he continued on and earned his master's degree as well. George became known as an expert in botany from the research he conducted at the school.

Professor Carver

After getting his masters, George began to teach as a professor at Iowa State. He was the first African-American professor at the college. However, in 1896 George was contacted byBooker T. Washington. Booker had opened an all-black college in Tuskegee, Alabama. He wanted George to come teach at his school. George agreed and moved to Tuskegee to head up the agricultural department. He would teach there for the rest of his life.

Crop Rotation

One of the main crops in the south was cotton. However, growing cotton year after year can remove nutrients from the soil. Eventually, the cotton crop will grow weak. Carver taught his students to use crop rotation. One year they would grow cotton, followed by other crops such as sweet potatoes and soybeans. By rotating the crops the soil stayed enriched.

Carver's research and education into crop rotation helped the farmers of the south be more successful. It also helped to diversify the products that they produced.

The Peanut

Another problem for farmers was the boll weevil. This insect would eat cotton and destroy their crops. Carver discovered that boll weevils don't like peanuts. However, farmers weren't so sure that they could make a good living off of peanuts. Carver began to come up with products that could be made from peanuts. He introduced hundreds of new peanut products including cooking oil, dyes for clothing, plastics, fuel for cars, and peanut butter.

George working in his lab
Source: USDA

In addition to his work with peanuts, Carver invented products that could be made from other important crops such as the soybean and sweet potato. By making these crops more profitable, farmers could rotate their crops and get more production from their land.

An Expert on Agriculture

Carver became known around the world as an expert on agriculture. He advisedPresident Theodore Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress on matters of agriculture. He even worked with Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi to help with growing crops in India.

Legacy

George Washington Carver was known throughout the south as the "farmer's best friend". His work on crop rotation and innovative products helped many farmers to survive and make a good living. His interest was in science and helping others, not in getting rich. He didn't even patent most of his work because he considered his ideas as gifts from God. He thought they should be free to others.

George died on January 5, 1943 after falling down the stairs at his home. Later, congress would name January 5th as George Washington Carver Day in his honor.

George working at the Tuskegee Institute
Source: Library of Congress

Interesting Facts about George Washington Carver

Growing up George had been known as Carver's George. When he started school he went by George Carver. He later added the W in the middle telling his friends it stood for Washington.

People in the south at the time called peanuts "goobers".

Carver would sometimes take his classes out to the farms and teach farmers directly what they could do to improve their crops.

His nickname later in life was the "Wizard of Tuskegee".

He wrote up a pamphlet called "Help for Hard Times" that instructed farmers on what they could do to improve their crops.

It takes over 500 peanuts to make one 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.

Activities

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Go here to watch avideo about George Washington Carver.

Other Inventors and Scientists:

Works Cited

Back to Biography for Kids

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Learn about the biography of George Washington Carver, scientist and botanist who worked with peanuts and helped the southern farmer.

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Facts About George Washington Carver for Kids | Biography

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Michael Jordan: Chicago Bulls Basketball Player

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Kids learn about Michael Jordan and his basketball career with the Chicago Bulls.

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Michael Jordan Top 10 Plays Of His Career

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Full Name: Michael Jeffrey Jordan
Birthday: February 17, 1963
Birthplace: NY (raised in Wilmington, NC)
College: North Carolina Tarheels
First NBA draft: Chicago Bulls in 1984
Nickname: Air Jordan
Height: 6'6
Weight: 215 lbs

It was really hard to guess who the greatest athlete of all time was... until Michael Jordan came along. In no other sport has an athlete dominated the game with such grace and humility. Michael was not just a fast, smart and powerful basketball player, but he separated himself from everyone else by being creative and improvising the way basketball was played. Michael made the impossible... possible.

Young Mikey

Michael's favorite sport was actually baseball because his dad James loved it so much. It was his brother Larry that got Mike to jump into basketball. But Michael was a late bloomer around the hoops. He was even cut by his high school team in his sophomore year.

Class Pic of Michael Jordan as a child

Michael's March Madness

The North Carolina Tarheels is the team where Michael must have found his all-star abilities. That's where Michael played college basketball. Even though Michael wasn't considered the best on the team, he got to take the last shot in the NCAA Championship game (the March Madness tournament) vs Georgetown. The Tarheels were down 1 point at the very end of the game and Michael got the ball... so if Michael hit the shot they would win, but miss they would lose... Nothing but Net! Michael made the biggest jump shot of his life and was headed to the NBA as a confident potential superstar.

Buzzer Beater

Greatest Moments of Michael Jordan (ESPN 02/17/2009)

Chicago Bulls' Bonanza

Michael was drafted by the Chicago Bulls not first... not even second, but as the 3rd pick. He could have been a Houston Rocket or a Portland Trailblazer, but those two teams decided to choose different players. Wow... what luck for Chicago!!! The Bulls became a dynasty team for the very first time with Head Coach Phil Jackson, and key players like Scottie Pippen and later Denis Rodman.

Michael playing for the Chicago Bulls

Becoming the Best

It wasn't easy for Michael to become the best. Even though his numbers were incredible leading the league in scoring, rebounding, assists, and steals, Michael had a difficult time in his first years trying to win a championship. It wasn't until the 1990s where Michael would 3-peat once and then 3-peat again!

Baseball Blues

Michael actually took a couple of years off basketball in 1994-95 to play baseball. His dad had been murdered in an armed robbery, so Michael wanted to play the game that his dad cherished so much. Even though he got to play some games for the Chicago White Sox, Michael soon quit and went back to basketball

Baseball Burden

Air Jordan Icon

Everyone knows it... the bald headed figure soaring through the sky with a basketball... Michael's Air Jordan trademark has become a legacy. It all started when Michael won back-to-back slam dunk contests and the photograph's became posters in almost every kid's bedroom

Air Jordan Logo

With his tongue sticking out in every flight, Michael's image was epic. He revolutionized the fashion of basketball by wearing his black and red Air Jordan sneakers that were against the NBA dress code. He paid the fines with his pocket change from Nike's endorsements and even now 10 years after his retirement, he is still one of the top 50 highest paid athlete's in the world.

1st Air Jordan sneakers

Michael the Master

Even though Michael had a tough time retiring basketball, he can't be touched in the way he mastered basketball. He ended his career unsuccessfully with the Washington Wizards in 2002, but even that season showed how much he loved the game... and that is really what it is all about.

"There is no such thing as a perfect basketball player, and I don't believe there is only one greatest player either. Everyone plays in different eras. I built my talents on the shoulders of someone else's talent. I believe greatness is an evolutionary process that changes and evolves era to era. Without Julius Erving, David Thompson, Walter Davis, and Elgin Baylor there would never have been a Michael Jordan. I evolved from them."

-Michael Jordan

Micahel dunking

Michael Jordan Info:

NBA Rookie of the Year 1985

6 NBA Championship Rings

5 NBA MVPs

Defensive Player of the yeat 1988

3-time All Star MVP

2 Olympic Gold Medals

Michael Jordan Top 50 All Time Plays

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Full Name: Michael Jeffrey Jordan Birthday: February 17, 1963 Birthplace: NY (raised in Wilmington, NC) College: North Carolina Tarheels First NBA draft: Chicago Bulls in 1984 Nickname: Air Jordan Height: 6'6 Weight: 215 lbs It was really hard to guess who the greatest athlete of all time was...

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W. E. B. Du Bois Facts

W. E. B. Du Bois was an American civil rights activist, historian and author who was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He was born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred and Mary Silvina Du Bois. As a child William attended an integrated school where his teachers encouraged him to follow intellectual pursuits. He graduated from high school and his childhood church raised the money for his college tuition. He attended Fisk University from 1885 to 1888 and then Harvard, where he earned his second bachelor's degree. In 1891 he was granted a scholarship to Harvard's graduate school. In 1895 he became the first African American to earn a Ph. D from Harvard.

William Du Bois was an only child. His mother was from a family that was one of the few free African American families in Great Barrington. They also owned land in the state of Massachusetts.

William Du Bois' father had served in the American Civil War.

William's father married his mother in 1867 but abandoned the family when William was only two years old.

As a child William attended school with white children and was treated well.

While attending Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, William encountered Jim Crow laws for the first time. Jim Crow laws required the separation of whites and African Americans. Bigotry, the suppression of voting by African Americans and lynching were common as a result of these laws.

After earning his second bachelors at Harvard (the first was at Fisk), William earned a fellowship to Germany's University of Berlin.

William Du Bois became well known in the early 1900s as a speaker for African American rights.

William Du Bois clashed with Booker T. Washington who was the most influential black leader at the time. Booker made deals to have Southern blacks submit to discrimination and segregation in exchange for basic rights such as education. William believed they should not agree to this and should fight for equal rights.

William Du Bois co-founded the Niagara Movement in 1905 to oppose the Atlanta Compromise - which was Booker's deal.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 black soldiers. In September the Atlanta race riot broke out. 25 people died. William Du Bois' vision began to gain ground.

William Du Bois co-founded the NAACP in 1909. This became an important African-American civil rights organization and is still in place and active today.

In 1951 William Du Bois was tried for his beliefs that capitalism was responsible for racism and poverty - leading to the accusation that he was an agent for a foreign state.

Albert Einstein offered to appear in court on behalf of William Du Bois but the potential for such great publicity caused the judge to acquit Du Bois and drop the case.

Du Bois eventually left the U.S. in 1963 and became a citizen of Ghana, due to harassment by the U.S. government.

William Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, at the age of 95. The next day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech.

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W. E. B. Du Bois was an American civil rights activist, historian and author who was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He was born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred and Mary Silvina Du Bois.

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On a recent August afternoon, near Nineteenth Street, two young girls with blond hair pulled back in ponytails ran past me, one of them calling out, "Daddy, Daddy, I just saw Misty Copeland!" The tone of voice might as well have been used to announce a sighting of Katy Perry, or Snow White. A few steps later, I entered the tiny lobby of a building on Broadway, where an old electric fan was not quite keeping the doorman cool. A caged elevator took me up to the third floor, where I passed through a low-ceilinged hallway crowded with unlabelled posters of ballet greats, until I reached an expansive fluorescent-lit room with two walls of slightly warped mirrors and air-conditioning units sealed into the windows with black electrical tape. The American Ballet Theatre soloists Misty Copeland and Alexandre Hammoudi were rehearsing the pas de deux from Act II of "Swan Lake," the scene in which we first meet Odette; an evil sorcerer's spell has left her a swan by day and a human by night. Prince Siegfried is poised to kill the swan, but then witnesses its transformation into a beautiful young woman. "It's not that you turn her," Kevin McKenzie, A.B.T.'s artistic director since 1992 and a former principal dancer, told Hammoudi. "It's that she's startled, so she turns to you." In the movement they were practicing, Odette is downstage left and Prince Siegfried walks up behind her. Odette is naïve, uncannily beautiful, and destined to die, but she is also, in each production, a very particular dancer. McKenzie continued, "And then you're near this creature, and you're both surprised by your proximity."

Although ballet fans never lack for darlings, rarely does a dancer become an old-fashioned star, one recognized outside the realm of people with nuanced opinions about the alternative endings to "Swan Lake." But Misty Copeland, who is thirty-two, has not only performed some of the most coveted and challenging roles in classical ballet; she has also danced atop a grand piano during Prince's 2010 Welcome 2 America tour and starred in a Diet Dr Pepper commercial, and, a few days before the "Swan Lake" rehearsal, was featured in a commercial for Under Armour that within a week of its release had more than four million views on YouTube. In the ad, a voice-over reads a rejection letter detailing why "the candidate" is not a good fit for ballet-the letter is a fiction, albeit one not unrelated to Copeland's career-while Copeland, who is wearing a sports bra and underwear, slowly rises onto pointe. In chiaroscuro lighting that is usually reserved for boxers' bodies, the camera focusses on Copeland's substantial, sinewy musculature. "I Will What I Want" is the tagline; a billboard in SoHo features a similar muscles-and-determination image. While it is disheartening to be reminded that product endorsement is the strongest measure of mainstream success, it feels good to see a woman who is doing more than being pretty become the kind of idol commonly associated with the stars of ESPN. Most ballerinas don't have pensions, they rarely dance past the age of forty (injuries often end their careers earlier than that), and a soloist at A.B.T. earns between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand dollars a year. The great Anna Pavlova endorsed Pond's Vanishing Cream.

American Ballet Theatre is typically considered the best company for classical ballet in the nation. For it, Copeland has played the Firebird, in "Firebird" (think wild jumps); Swanilda, in "Coppélia" (dirndls and dolls); Gamzatti, in "La Bayadère" (fury and theophany); and Lescaut's mistress, in "Manon" (blond wig and longing). This month, she played the lead in "Swan Lake," the ballet equivalent of playing Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company; in the course of two hours, the ballerina must become the supremely innocent Odette and the masterfully manipulative Odile, who is pretending to be Odette; of course, she must also be a swan. Copeland has danced with A.B.T. since 2001, and performed as a soloist since 2007, but until recently her important solo roles have largely been in relatively modern pieces; all her major roles in full-length ballets have been performed in the past two years. Following one after the other, her recent roles create the illusion of Copeland's proceeding along a kind of inevitable music-box destiny, but her path to becoming a star ballerina has been as dramatic, unlikely, and hinged on coincidence as the plots of most ballets-the ones that have plots, anyway, like the classical ones she prefers, which require tremendous endurance and technical expertise to produce spectacles we associate with spun sugar.

Copeland grew up in Los Angeles, as one of six children. Her memoir, "Life in Motion," written with Charisse Jones, portrays her childhood as having been in some ways idyllic: swimming at the beach, a circle of loving and talented siblings, a charismatic and beautiful mother, and a gift for responsibility and leadership. But another version of Copeland's childhood, which also comes through in her memoir, is the hardship tale: not knowing her real father, a succession of differently difficult stepfathers, and uncertainty about whether there would be dinner on any given night.

As a young girl, Copeland loved dancing to Mariah Carey videos, rewatching a movie about the gymnast Nadia Comaneci, and being very prepared for school, where she was a hall monitor and the class treasurer. She usually showed up an hour early. Until the age of thirteen, she took no gymnastics or dance classes, though she did take and love a woodworking class at the local Boys & Girls Club.

Copeland is considered an unlikely ballerina: she is curvy and she is black, neither of which is a common attribute in the field. But it is her very late beginning and rapid attainment of virtuosity that are arguably without precedent for a female ballerina. (Rudolf Nureyev had a famously late and chaotic start, his early training having been limited by the vagaries of the post-Second World War Soviet Union.) Many professional ballet dancers begin their training around the age of three. Every dancer is a synthesis of givens-height, limb length, natural turnout-and intense effort, but Copeland's late start can exaggerate the tendency we might have to regard a ballerina as simply touched by something divine.

When she was thirteen, and very shy, Copeland followed the lead of her older sister Erica and tried out for the middle-school drill team. She choreographed her own piece, set to George Michael's "I Want Your Sex." The closing move was a split, head held high. The evening after the audition, she received a call saying that she had been named captain of the squad of sixty.

The team's coach, Elizabeth Cantine, was new, and Erica, who had been a drill-team star, told Misty that this was unfortunate; the old coach had led the team to wins all over the state, while Cantine was an unknown, just someone who'd been hired to teach history and English. But Cantine had a background in classical dance, and, after working with Misty for a short time she suggested that she try the ballet class at the Boys & Girls Club. "I wasn't excited by the idea of being with people I didn't know, and though I loved movement, I had no particular feelings about ballet," Copeland said. "But I didn't want to displease Liz."

Cindy Bradley, who taught the class, told me, "I remember putting my hand on her foot, putting it into a tendu pointe, and she was definitely able to go into that position-she was able to go into all the positions that I put her into that day-but it wasn't about that." Bradley said she had a kind of vision, "right then, that first day, of this little girl becoming amazing."

Copeland recalls her first class differently: "I was so embarrassed. I didn't know anything that the other girls in the class knew; I thought I was doing everything wrong."

But she kept attending the class. Copeland had an unusual body: her shoulders were sloped, her legs were long, her knees were hyperextended, and she was effortlessly flexible and strong even as she was very slight. She was in the habit of entertaining her siblings (and slightly weirding them out) by linking her hands together, putting them over her head behind her ears, and then getting her elbows to bend in the wrong direction. She also had a natural ability to quickly memorize and mimic any movement she saw. She began attending ballet classes five days a week, at Bradley's studio in San Pedro. "One day, it just clicked," Copeland told me. "I began to understand what it was."

According to Copeland, the beginning of her ballet career overlapped with her family's abrupt move out of her second stepfather's spacious home and into a single room of the Sunset Inn, near a highway and liquor stores, in Gardena. The move left her with a long commute to school and then home from ballet practice. Her brother Douglas recalls them missing their bus one afternoon, and walking the thirteen miles home. Seeing an exhausted Copeland one evening, her mother, Sylvia DeLaCerna, told her that she had to give up ballet. Copeland didn't protest; that wasn't what she was like.

But the next evening DeLaCerna and Bradley spoke, and they decided that Misty would spend the weekdays at the Bradley home and weekends with her family. "I hadn't been married that long," Bradley explained, "and we had a two-year-old son, but I just walked into our home that night and called out to my husband, 'I have Misty here with me, and she's going to be staying with us.' "

Bradley waived Copeland's ballet-school fees, and other community members contributed to the cost of her leotards and pointe shoes. "When I was dancing, I felt in control, and happy," Copeland said. "I'm a Virgo, so I really like to be in control." For most of the next three years, she lived with the Bradleys. Fairly predictable tensions arose between the two families. "I felt very loved and accepted by the Bradleys-I felt like a member of the family," Copeland told me. "I'm not sure my attitude was so great when I would go home and complain about canned string beans, and say that I preferred shrimp scampi. My mom was working all day, and she had six children." Copeland shared a room with the Bradleys' young son, Wolf, attended synagogue with Bradley's parents, and at the dinner table all attention was centered on her and her goals. Bradley's husband, a modern-dance teacher, was Copeland's pas-de-deux instructor and partner. "I loved the attention," Copeland told me.

At fifteen, Copeland attended the San Francisco Ballet summer intensive program on a full scholarship; at the end of it she was invited to study with the school. (She turned the invitation down, planning to try out for her dream company, A.B.T.) Copeland believes, in retrospect, that her mother saw her summer success as evidence that she no longer needed the Bradleys-she could now move back in with her family and attend a ballet school nearby. At the time, however, both Copeland and the Bradleys felt that this would damage Copeland's career. Everyone panicked. In her memoir, Copeland relates that the Bradleys introduced her to a lawyer, and she filed for emancipation. DeLaCerna filed restraining orders against the Bradleys, claiming that they had brainwashed her daughter. Copeland was too young, by a few weeks, to take action anyway. At one point, police officers picked Copeland up, so that she could be reunited with her mother, and for the next decade she saw little of the Bradleys.

"It was a nightmare," Copeland told me. Her story was covered extensively in newspapers and on television. "I had no places left for privacy, where I could feel safe. Everyone had an opinion about what happened." Eventually, all sides withdrew their claims. A while later, Copeland went with Elizabeth Cantine to try out for A.B.T.'s summer intensive session; she was accepted, and at the end of the program she was invited to join the studio company. Her mother expressed reservations, but ultimately said that the choice was Copeland's. After spending another year at home, Copeland moved to New York.

"None of this is a fairy tale," Craig Salstein, an A.B.T. soloist who has danced with Copeland since her earliest days in the company, told me. He was talking about ballet in general, but it applies equally to Copeland's career path. Only a few months after she became a member of A.B.T.'s corps de ballet, at the age of eighteen, she found out that she had a lower-vertebral fracture. She had to wear a brace twenty-three hours of the day, and for a year she was unable to dance at all. A doctor, learning that she had not yet menstruated, told her that this was likely contributing to weakness in her bones. He recommended that Copeland begin taking birth-control pills to induce puberty. Within ten days, she began menstruating, and in a short time her figure changed from ballet-tiny to Marilyn Monroe. Her body, which at the start of her career had been considered perfect for ballet-she was said to have the "Balanchine body"-was suddenly no longer the ideal. "I was scheduled to do Clara, in 'The Nutcracker,' before that injury," Copeland said. More than a decade passed before she was offered the role again.

Copeland says that eating disorders are not as pervasive among ballerinas as people think. Nearly every woman has at times felt that the shape of her body has determined an overwhelming proportion of someone's response to her; ballet dancers, so much more intimately aware of their bodies' appearance and ability both, might-through professionalism, through necessity-have a healthier way of relating to their bodies than the rest of us. Then again, the stakes are higher. Copeland had never given much thought to her diet, but when it was suggested to her that she needed to "lengthen"-balletspeak for losing weight-she rebelled. This was pretty much the first time in her life that she had done so, and, in the way of a young person, she mostly damaged herself.

"I didn't want to be seen ordering huge amounts of food, but the local Krispy Kreme would do deliveries if the order was large enough," Copeland said. "After practice, I would order two dozen doughnuts and then, alone in my apartment, eat most of them." She felt that her ballet career was getting away from her, that she was far from family, that she was alone. "I was barely over a hundred pounds, but I felt so fat, and even a stranger at a club, when I told him I was a ballerina, said, 'No way,' " Copeland recalled. "It took me about five years to figure out how my body worked, and to understand how to make my muscles more lean."

Even though Copeland now has a more elongated-more classical-physique, and no longer has a double-D chest, she remains more buxom than most ballet dancers, and also more visibly athletic. A significant part of what distinguishes her is her un-classical body. Marie Taglioni, the nineteenth-century ballerina, is thought to have had special appeal because her proportions didn't conform to the ideal; her rounded back made her lean forward a tiny bit, so that she seemed on the verge of losing her balance; her physical limitations ended up shaping what became her definitive style. And it was arguably with Taglioni that ballet-a man's game until a hundred years before, with men " en travesti " even playing the roles of women in most serious productions-began to be about ballerinas.

In a recent production of "La Bayadère," at the Metropolitan Opera House, Copeland played Gamzatti, a raja's daughter who has been promised the warrior Solor as a husband, even as Solor has declared his love for a temple dancer, Nikiya. Copeland's scene with Alina Cojocaru's Nikiya was tense and complicatedly erotic-a highlight of the ballet. But it was the scene that followed, in which Gamzatti mostly sits at the side of the stage, that stayed with me. While Nikiya dances for Gamzatti's betrothal, Gamzatti has to put on a game face about the love triangle. Copeland's commitment to the minimal movement required by her role-to the expressiveness of her neck and her long-fingered hands-means that emotion must be compressed into the smallest gestures. Even her simple walk was mesmerizing, her stiff yellow tutu moving as softly as a sea anemone. (Ballet costuming often seems ridiculous at first glance, but usually reveals its own special mechanics.) When I went backstage after the show to meet Copeland, a very slight, smiling woman came out, wearing a black sports bra and overalls that left her narrow back exposed. The formidable Gamzatti was gone. The actors Nicole Ari Parker and Boris Kodjoe had brought their two young children to meet Copeland, and when she posed for a photo with them she might have been the third child. People often find that ballerinas seem smaller offstage, an effect attributable, in part, to the elongation of their legs in pointe shoes, but also to charisma.

Those of us who are outside the world of ballet tend to think of it as a very old art form: Louis XIII wrote ballets, and Louis XIV danced in forty productions. But ballet, like so many venerable and beautiful things, has been too easily co-opted into the fallacy of our assumption that its worth today is best measured by fidelity to its original form. In the ballet of the French aristocracy, different body types were assigned to different character types-tall people played nobles, shorter people played comic roles-and, in a dance, the choreography emphasized the king's literal superiority over the court. After the French Revolution, those norms changed, and the ballet we now think of as classical is, in large part, derived from a radical reaction against original ideals.

The story of ballet in America also began as a devotion to ballet as it once was; it was seen as something from across the ocean. In the nineteen-forties, Ballet Theatre, the precursor to A.B.T., an American company, was billed as "The Greatest in Russian Ballet." As the historian and former dancer Jennifer Homans details, in "Apollo's Angels," it was not until after the Second World War that a distinctively American ballet began to form. (This followed some tender failings with ballet scenarios about Billy the Kid and Pocahontas.) The United States government, which took a Cold War interest in developing an American ballet-and culture-that could rival the Russians', began to fund émigré dancers and choreographers who had fled to New York. When the dance companies toured abroad, they travelled in Army buses and slept at Air Force bases. "I could represent America . . . better than ice boxes and electric bathtubs can," George Balanchine said. Russian dancers who came to America were treated like trophies: Rudolf Nureyev was flown on a private plane to have tea at the White House with Jacqueline Kennedy.

Ballet, and ballerinas, have been deployed to extoll the king, and then the Politburo, and then the President-but the art often exceeded what was asked of it. With the mixed blessing of generous funding, choreographers like Balanchine, Antony Tudor, and Arthur Mitchell created a ballet scene in America that was like nowhere else in the world-radical, classical, old, new, constrained, and wild. Perhaps it's not surprising that some of the ballets most beloved in the U.S. are about captive birds and mistresses treated other than ideally yet remaining devoted.

When I visited Copeland backstage after "La Bayadère," I met a friend of hers, eighty-year-old Raven Wilkinson, an elegant older woman who wore her hair twisted into a topknot. Wilkinson was born in Harlem, and in 1955 joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo for its American tours. "I had been told not to try out, that they wouldn't take me, because they toured through cities in the South," Wilkinson said to me, when we met for lunch a while later. She has African, Native American, and European ancestors; she is pale, and onstage she wore powder. "But I thought, Well, if I don't even try out I know I'll never have what I want."

Wilkinson toured with the Ballet Russe for two years, dancing the Chinese solo in "The Nutcracker," a solo in the famous waltz of "Les Sylphides," and in the pas de trois in "Raymonda." Then, in 1957, at a hotel for whites in Atlanta, Wilkinson noticed the hotel manager talking to the director of the ballet. The manager walked over to the elevator operator, who was black, and asked her to point out who among the dancers might be "colored"; she pointed to Wilkinson. The manager called a cab for her-one that served colored people-and she spent the night at a colored hotel. After that, booking agents in the South were aware of the colored ballerina; Wilkinson would sometimes skip the company's Southern engagements and, instead, rejoin the company when it reached Baltimore.

Eventually, Wilkinson left the U.S. to dance with the Dutch National Ballet, encouraged by the black American dancer Sylvester Campbell, who had joined the company. "I swear, he was better even than Nureyev-I used to think his joints were ball bearings," Wilkinson told me. Europe had a reputation for being more open to dancers of color, and the Dutch treat their dancers very well; they receive pensions, and after retirement they are offered training for other work. "But I felt I was American," Wilkinson said. "And, when I was done dancing, I wanted to come home." For many years, she played small roles with the New York City Opera.

The original dream of a uniquely American ballet was of a company that mixed whites and "Negroes"-the term used by George Balanchine, one of the co-founders of New York City Ballet. Balanchine had been influenced by working with Josephine Baker, the black American dancer who became a celebrity in France during the twenties. His vision was only occasionally realized: in his famous "Agon," he choreographed a pas de deux for Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell, a white woman and a black man. "Agon" was performed in 1957, to critical celebration, even though it could not be shown on television until 1968. Balanchine also made Maria Tallchief, who was of Osage heritage, an early star of the New York City Ballet. (For a time, he also made her his wife.)

Many black ballet dancers, including Wilkinson, were encouraged to concentrate on "African dance," or maybe modern dance or musical theatre-even if they had spent years training in classical ballet. Virginia Johnson, long a lead ballerina and now the artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, a predominantly African-American ballet company, once said she had been told by someone with good intentions that she could never be a ballerina because there aren't any black ballerinas.

That is not quite true today, but it's in the neighborhood of true. "Let's be honest," Susan Fales-Hill, a writer and a philanthropist who served on the board of A.B.T., says. "Most ballet companies look like an Alabama country club in 1952." There is a small number of Asian-American ballerinas, and a small number of black ones. The reasons usually cited include the holdover of antiquated ideas of beauty, the lack of role models, the preference for a uniform look among the corps dancers in a company, and the high cost of years of training. (Pointe shoes, for example, are around seventy dollars a pair, and a serious dancer can easily go through a pair a week.) Lauren Anderson, a longtime principal dancer with the Houston Ballet, was the first African-American woman to reach the rank of principal ballerina with a major American company other than D.T.H. (Principal is the highest rank for a dancer, above soloist.) She played Odette/Odile a number of times before she retired, in 2006. "When we think of ballerinas, we think of pink and pale and fluffy," she told me. "We're not accustomed to thinking of black women's bodies in that context. We're accustomed to thinking of black women as athletic and strong. But all ballerinas are athletic, all ballerinas are strong."

In 2004, when D.T.H. went dormant for nine years, because of financial difficulties, only one of its dancers was offered a job with a major American ballet company. "For many people, even if the physical things are there, this one physical factor-skin color-makes it hard to see the others," Johnson told the critic Marina Harss, in an extended interview that appeared in DanceTabs. Johnson has said that she regularly gets calls from ballet companies saying that they are looking for more dancers of color, but the problem goes beyond casting. D.T.H. hosts a summer session for kids from around the country, and "for so many of them this is the first time they're in a classroom that really welcomes them," she said. "But I look at these dancers and I see that they're not being corrected. There are some very basic things going on that reveal that they're being ignored."

Copeland told me, "People will say, 'Isn't it really about class, not race?' " She explained that she sometimes felt a more natural connection to some of the A.B.T. dancers who grew up abroad; in Russia and Cuba, for example, ballet is more a part of popular culture, and dancers come from all social classes. "But I think there is more to it than that. I can see now how I was so well supported, even in my low times, but I don't know if I ever felt like I belonged."

"You can't imagine how much it means to people, to see themselves onstage," Fales-Hill said. At a crowded luncheon held in Copeland's honor by the New York alumnae chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority (founded at Howard University, in 1913), Copeland answered questions about her life and her career, but she also simply listened, as one woman after another-engineers, lawyers, journalists-stood up to praise and bless her. One woman asked her what her goals were, now that she had achieved so much, and Copeland said, right off, like a mantra, "My goal is to become the first African-American principal dancer with A.B.T." After a pause, she added, "And, you know, of course, to get married and have kids." (Copeland lives with her boyfriend, Olu Evans, a lawyer.)

Copeland acts as a mentor to aspiring dancers, including Makeda Roney, a young woman who wrote Copeland a letter while she was in tenth grade, after seeing her perform. Roney, who was recently accepted into a yearlong program with the Joffrey Ballet, in Chicago, says that she calls or writes to Copeland whenever she feels anxious or discouraged. "She's like a sister to me," Roney said. Copeland has also been a public face for A.B.T.'s recent Project Plié initiative, which provides training and scholarships for kids who live in communities where there is little exposure to ballet.

Copeland's artistic and commercial successes make us all feel good-about ballet, about America-and yet that feeling is somewhat tendentious. It is impossible to distill the current role of race in ballet (or in any field) from one woman's career. Copeland's race makes her immediately distinctive in the ballet world, and this has undoubtedly helped her commercial career, but murmurings, on some online dance-discussion threads, that she has been excessively promoted within A.B.T. because of her race overlook not just her virtuosity but also the many years in which she wasn't a soloist, or even a lead dancer.

The immensely talented young ballet dancer Michaela DePrince, an orphan from Sierra Leone who was adopted at the age of four by a New Jersey family, danced for a short time with D.T.H., but said that she yearned for "the frills, flounce, and romance of classical ballet" that connected her to her childhood love of fairy tales. (D.T.H. is a classical ballet company, but its repertoire largely consists of shorter pieces, rather than long crowd-pleasers like "Romeo and Juliet.") Raven Wilkinson said to me, toward the end of our lunch, "I don't want to sound bitter-I've never been a protester-but when I saw that Michaela DePrince had left for the Dutch National Ballet, as I had, I felt like nothing had changed." She continued, "I asked Michaela, 'What about American companies?' She said she was told she didn't have the right body type."

In April, 2012, Copeland danced her first full lead role in an A.B.T. production, as the Firebird in the Stravinsky ballet. Alexei Ratmansky, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi, modelled the choreography, in part, on Copeland's body, as well as on those of the two other lead dancers playing the role. In "Firebird," an enchanted bird is caught by a prince who will not free her unless she promises to exercise her powers on his behalf; eventually, she does so, and, along the way, she helps free some enchanted maidens and reunite the prince with his beloved. The Los Angeles Times praised Copeland's Firebird as "abandoned" and "creaturely," and, in this magazine, Joan Acocella wrote that her performance showed that her artistry merited promotion to principal dancer. Days after Copeland's first Metropolitan Opera House performance in New York, she discovered that she had six stress fractures in her left tibia; she had surgery to insert a titanium plate in her shin. The hyperextended knees that are part of what makes Copeland's lines so lovely also make her more vulnerable to certain kinds of injury, just as the pointe shoes that foster the illusion of a ballerina's length also damage her feet. Already, Copeland was approaching an age when dancers don't have many years left, and now she wasn't sure how long she would be sidelined.

"I went to the J.C.C. near my house, because I knew I would want to swim as part of my recovery," Copeland told me. "I just took the Pilates class, on a whim. After class, in the locker room, I had showered-I didn't even have clothes on-and this tiny little woman, smaller than me, she comes up to me while I'm naked, saying, 'You look like that ballerina Misty Copeland. You look too small to be her-not tall enough-but those look like her legs,' " Copeland recounted. "I thought, Great, here's a crazy person." It was Marjorie Liebert, a former dancer, now in her sixties, who taught a class in her apartment, in something that Copeland had never heard of: barre-à-terre, a method of doing ballet while, basically, lying on the floor.

"My résumé says I'm five feet tall, but I'm not," Liebert told me. "I'm four foot eleven. It didn't help my ballet career: many people wouldn't even let me try out." After an accident and a subsequent surgery, in the nineteen-seventies, Liebert went to Paris, intending to dance. She had heard of a healing class taught by a man named Boris Kniaseff, who had a devoted following. "I went, and first I thought, This is interesting. I went again, and I thought, This is important. In a month, I grew an inch and a half. I know that sounds unbelievable, but it's true." Kniaseff supposedly developed barre-à-terre after seeing circus performers begin their exercises while lying on the floor. Liebert became a disciple of sorts, and when Kniaseff died she began to teach his technique; eventually, she moved back to New York, bringing it with her.

For seven months, Copeland worked with Liebert nearly every day. "I absolutely wouldn't be the dancer that I am now without her," Copeland told me more than once. Liebert explained to me that many people are unable to stick with a barre-à-terre class. Transitioning between positions while lying on the floor requires using muscles in a different way than people are accustomed to. "Lying on the floor, you have a different perspective. You really have to find your center to make yourself better, to hold yourself up."

Copeland hesitated to admit that her injury, which healed slowly, had been a difficult time for her. She joked, "There were a couple days when Marjorie was sick, and that was very hard for me, it's true. My boyfriend said to me, 'That's what happens when your closest friend is in her sixties.' "

In May, 2013, Copeland was back onstage. Her first performance, as Queen of the Dryads, in "Don Quixote," disappointed her. But a week later she felt that she was performing at a new level. When I asked Kevin McKenzie, A.B.T.'s artistic director, why he has had the confidence to cast Misty in so many lead roles in the past two years, he said, "She learned so much from her periods off." He continued, "Even though she had this late start and meteoric rise, in the end her training was as long as anyone's. She had gone through puberty and had a different body, and then she excelled again. She had a heinous injury; she came back better-more mature, more analytical. Because she had to be, because she knew she couldn't take her body for granted. I'm a firm believer that, no matter how talented you are when you're young, there's a certain amount of life experience you can't accelerate. Misty could have done these same roles-technically-ten years ago, but she wouldn't have been ready."

Lauren Anderson told me that she had played the Sugar Plum Fairy for twenty-five years, and that the role kept evolving as she herself changed. "You're playing someone else, but you're also yourself-you have to be in order to be believable," she said. When Anderson premièred the Odette/Odile role, she was coming out of a divorce. "I took all the tragedy and heartbreak and just brought it out onstage with me. When I was onstage, I was free from the problems of my life. I was someone else."

Liebert said simply, "We dance who we are."

Near my apartment, there's a dance school on the second floor of a nondescript building, and sometimes, looking up from the dollar-a-slice pizza place across the street, you can see the students going through their exercises again and again and again. You couldn't choreograph as ideal a work as that. A smart and witty ballet dancer once told me that he thought truly pure ballet would eliminate performances-that the essence of ballet is the practice of it. Copeland said to me, with obvious frustration, "In social situations, people so often ask me, 'So what do you do when you're not performing-what is your job?' I'm, like, 'I have a job, I work every day, I'm in a union, we get overtime.' "

In addition to its practice space on Broadway, A.B.T. has a rehearsal space several floors below the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. One afternoon, I went to see Copeland rehearse a pas de deux with Herman Cornejo for a production of Kenneth MacMillan's ballet "Manon," which they were to perform for the first time the next day. To get to the practice space, I tunnelled through one red-velvet-and-gold-detailed hall after another, until I found a service elevator. Though it was summer, a woman was wearing red snow booties and a fading purple jumper with a long-sleeved polka-dot shirt underneath. Standing in natural turnout, she got off the elevator in front of me, with that walk that unites ballerinas and cowboys. Many dancers in the hallways were wearing similar booties, and the majority of the women had hair that seemed to come from a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting. Basement Floor C resembled a boiler room, yet I felt that I had entered a commune of unicorns.

In the high-ceilinged practice space, Copeland and Cornejo lay on the floor, whispering and laughing as they stretched. "For your next career, as a stripper, you need to work on your split," Copeland said to Cornejo. They were waiting for Keith Roberts, a former principal dancer and now a ballet master, who would be running the session. He had been delayed upstairs by a dress rehearsal with the corps de ballet, so Copeland asked Cornejo for help working on her entrance.

"There's never enough time to tell anyone anything," Roberts said, when he rushed in. The conductor, Ormsby Wilkins, sat at the piano with Daniel Waite, the pianist. They began practicing. Cornejo played the charming cad Lescaut; Copeland was his young lover, probably one of many. In the scene they were rehearsing, Lescaut is drunk, and spins his mistress off balance while she's on pointe; although he has knocked her over, he continues spinning an invisible ballerina. Much of the movement was tilted in this way.

I never used to be easily drawn in by the long storybook standards of classical ballet; it was as if the salmon sandwiches and the bubbly rosés served during intermission got in the way. It was easier to access the more immediately legible expressiveness of abstract, modern pieces. But many dancers have told me that they revere the long classical pieces. When I asked why, they talked about how freeing the strict constraints of classical ballet are, from its most basic positions to its thirty-two-fouetté extremes; from other forms of dance, one couldn't transition to classical ballet, but from classical ballet one could do anything.

Dance is not like the other arts. The words in a book stay in place, paintings barely fade, musical performances can be recorded. But watching a recording of dance is about as close to the real thing as reading "Eugene Onegin" in Google Translate. Dancers often restrain themselves, necessarily, during practice, but Cornejo and Copeland seemed to be leaping higher, and moving more articulately, than they did onstage. I had just seen three grand ballet performances in a row, but this harshly lit, uncostumed, and repeatedly interrupted performance was my favorite. It wasn't simply the proximity, the sound of the shoes, the soothingly minor comments-"Your back arm tends to get behind you"; "A little more shoulder at the beginning, so it's not so flat"-it was more the juxtaposition of the mundane and the magnificent: "Be careful when you do the relevé; don't crank her leg too much"; "The second pirouette-did you just do left?"

"People are surprised to hear that I still go to class," Copeland told me. "But that's what dancers do." In a studio class one Thursday morning, there were dancers from all ranks of A.B.T., as well as dancers not yet in the company, stretching, chatting. One dancer asked for a recommendation for a travel agent. Another replied that no one has used travel agents since the eighties. Copeland sat on the floor beside them, in a purple leotard, applying glue to the inside of her pointe shoes. The director of A.B.T.'s studio company, a former dancer named Kate Lydon, called the class to attention: "We'll start with sixteen swings, port de bras forward." The pianist accompanying the class played some Dvořák, then some Bach, then "The Girl from Ipanema." After the barre exercises, there were floor exercises, then jumps, then more exercises moving across the room. ♦

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On a recent August afternoon, near Nineteenth Street, two young girls with blond hair pulled back in ponytails ran past me, one of them calling out, "Daddy, Daddy, I just saw Misty Copeland!" The tone of voice might as well have been used to announce a sighting of Katy Perry, or Snow White.

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Firebird, A Story of Misty Copeland—Read Aloud Fun!

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Misty Copeland Dances Romeo + Juliet, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux & White Swan at Vail Dance 2015

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Fresberg Cartoon – Learning & History for Students

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Oprah Winfrey for Kids (Biography) Black History Month for Kids/Children (Cartoon)

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In high school, Rudolph became the star basketball player for her team. She also did track for 4 years and never lost a race. When she was 16 years old, she signed up for the Summer Olympics in track. She won the bronze medal in the track events.

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Wilma Unlimited How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman

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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and writer. She was a member of the Democratic Party.

Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York City. She studied at Brooklyn College.

She was a member of the United States House of Representatives for New York's 2nd district. She served as a representative from 1969 to 1983.

She ran for President of the United States in 1972 as a Democrat. She lost the primary to George McGovern. Chisholm became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States.

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York, of immigrant parents. Her father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, was born in British Guiana and arrived in the United States via Antilla, Cuba, on April 10, 1923, aboard the S.S. Munamar in New York City. Her mother, Ruby Seale, was born in Christ Church, Barbados, and arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. Pocone on March 8, 1921. At age three, Chisholm was sent to Barbados to live with her maternal grandmother, Emaline Seale, in Christ Church; where she attended the Vauxhall Primary School. She did not return until roughly seven years later when she arrived in New York City on May 19, 1934, aboard the S.S. Narissa. In her 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote: "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason." Chisholm is an alumna of Girls' High School, she earned her BA from Brooklyn College in 1946 and later earned her MA from Columbia University in elementary education in 1952. She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

From 1953 to 1959, she was director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center. From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care.

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and was elected to the New York State Legislature. In 1968, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York's 12th District congressional seat, and was elected to the House of Representatives. Defeating Republican candidate James Farmer, Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 as one of its founding members.

As a fresh black woman, Chisholm was assigned to the House Agricultural Committee. Given her urban district, she felt the placement was irrelevant to her constituents and shocked many by asking for reassignment. She was then placed on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. Soon after, she voted for Hale Boggs as House Majority Leader over John Conyers. As a reward for her support, Boggs assigned her to the much-prized Education and Labor Committee, which was her preferred committee. She was the third highest-ranking member of this committee when she retired from Congress.

All those Chisholm hired for her office were women, half of them black. Chisholm said that during her New York legislative career, she had faced much more discrimination because she was a woman than because she was black.

In the 1972 U.S. presidential election, she made a bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. She survived three assassination attempts during the campaign. She campaigned in 12 states and won the Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey primaries earning 152 delegates. However, she lost the hotly contested primaries to George McGovern at the convention in Miami Beach, Florida. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, as a symbolic gesture, McGovern opponent Hubert H. Humphrey released his black delegates to Chisholm, giving her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the nomination. Chisholm's base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women.

Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo." Among the volunteers who were inspired by her campaign was Barbara Lee, who continued to be politically active and was elected as a congresswoman 25 years later. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem attempted to run as Chisholm delegates in New York.

Chisholm created controversy when she visited rival and ideological opposite George Wallace in the hospital soon after his shooting in May 1972, during the 1972 presidential primary campaign. Several years later, when Chisholm worked on a bill to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage, Wallace helped gain votes of enough Southern congressmen to push the legislation through the House.

From 1977 to 1981, during the 95th Congress and 96th Congress, Chisholm was elected to a position in the House Democratic leadership, as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.

Throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She was a vocal opponent of the draft and supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.

In 1970, she authored a child care bill. The bill passed the House and the Senate, but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon, who called it "the Sovietization of American children".

In the area of national security and foreign policy, Chisholm worked for the revocation of Internal Security Act of 1950. She opposed the American involvement in the Vietnam War and the expansion of weapon developments. During the Jimmy Carter administration, she called for better treatment of Haitian refugees.

Personal life

Chisholm was married to Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican private investigator from 1949 to 1977. In 1978, she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr., a Buffalo businessman who died in 1986. Chisholm had no children and moved to Florida when she retired.

Retirement and death

Chisholm announced her retirement from Congress in 1982. Her seat was won by a fellow Democrat, Major Owens, in 1983.

After retirement she resumed her career in education, teaching politics and women's studies and being named to the Purington Chair at Mount Holyoke College from 1983 to 1987. In 1985 she was a visiting scholar at Spelman College. In 1984 and 1988, she campaigned for Jesse Jackson for the presidential elections. In 1990, Chisholm, along with 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton nominated her to the ambassadorship to Jamaica, but she could not serve due to poor health. In the same year she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Chisholm retired to Florida and died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach near Daytona Beach. She was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.

In February 2005, Shirley Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary film, aired on U.S public television. It chronicled Chisholm's 1972 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was directed and produced by independent, African-American filmmaker Shola Lynch. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. On April 9, 2006, the film was announced as a winner of a Peabody Award.

In 1975, Chisholm was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Smith College.

In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Shirley Chisholm on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and writer. She was a member of the Democratic Party. Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York City. She studied at Brooklyn College. She was a member of the United States House of Representatives for New York's 2nd district.

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Make your brand standout with an amazing Explainer Video that inspires! At Brandbusters we recognized the need of changing the way of brand storytelling through explainer video. We create videos that boost up your brand story and creates a thrill among your audience, influencing them to buy your product or service.

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1. Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross. She would later adopt the name "Harriet" after her mother: Harriet Ross. The surname Tubman comes from her first husband, John Tubman, who she married in 1844.

2. Harriet was born a slave and raised on Maryland's Eastern Shore where the lines between slavery and freedom were often blurred. It was not unusual for families in this area to include both free and enslaved members. Harriet's own husband, John Tubman was a free black man. Her status, however, remained unchanged until she fled to Pennsylvania - a free state - in 1849. Her husband did not make the journey and ultimately re-married after Harriet's departure.

3. Harriet would return to Maryland many times over the next decade to rescue both family and non-famly members from the bondages of slavery.

4. Harriet earned the nickname "Moses" after the prophet Moses in the Bible who led his people to freedom. In all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger."

5. Tubman's work was a constant threat to her own freedom and safety. Slave holders placed a bounty for her capture and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was an ever-present danger, imposing severe punishments on any person who assisted the escape of a slave.

6. Harriet wore many hats: She was an active proponent of women's suffrage and worked alongside women such as side Susan B. Anthony. During the civil war, Harriet also worked for the Union Army as a cook, a nurse and even a spy.

7. Harriet was acquainted with leading abolitionists of the day, including John Brown who conferred with "General Tubman" about his plans to raid Harpers Ferry.

8. Harriet had one daughter, Gertie, whom she and her second husband (Nelson Davis) adopted after the Civil war.

9. Harriet suffered life-long headaches, seizures and had vivid dreams as a result of a traumatic head injury she suffered as a teenager while trying to stand up for a fellow field hand. These same symptoms gave her powerful visions that she ascribed to God and helped guide her on many trips to the North while leading others to freedom.

10. Just before Harriet's death in 1913 she told friends and family, "I go to prepare a place for you." She was buried with military honors in Fort Hill Cemetery in New York.

BONUS FACT: In 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that the countenance of Harriet Tubman will appear on a new $20 bill.

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10 Interesting Facts about Harriet Tubman | PBS

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The Underground Railroad was a lifeline for slaves escaping to freedom, and Harriet Tubman was undoubtedly one of its most famous "conductors." Over one hundred years since her passing (March 10, 1913), we invite you to revisit the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman.

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Kids learn about the biography and life of author Maya Angelou including her childhood, early career, work as a civil rights activist, becoming a writer, famous works, poetry, and interesting facts.

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I Am Rosa Parks - Read Along w/ Words on Screen

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Condoleezza Rice (born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American Republican politician, She was the 66th United States Secretary of State. She was the second Secretary of State under former President George W. Bush. She took over from Colin Powell on January 26, 2005, after he stepped down. Rice was the first African American woman, second African American (after Powell), and second woman (after Madeleine Albright) to serve as Secretary of State. Her educator was Josef Korbel, he inspired her.

Before she became Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term (2001-2005). Before she did this, she was a Professor of political science at Stanford University from 1993 to 1999, where she also was the Provost.

Rice was in the 2011 documentary Miss Representation.

Rice was a Democrat until 1982. She then changed to Republican because she did not agree with the foreign policy of Democratic President Jimmy Carter and because her father was Republican.

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Condoleezza Rice (born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American Republican politician, She was the 66th United States Secretary of State. She was the second Secretary of State under former President George W. Bush. She took over from Colin Powell on January 26, 2005, after he stepped down.

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Mary McLeod Bethune Timeline
Timeline Description: Mary McLeod Bethune (born July 10, 1875) was an educator, philanthropist and civil rights activist active in Florida in the first half of the 20th century. Bethune served as an advisor to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was eventually known as the "First Lady of the Struggle" for her key role in advocating civil rights for African Americans.

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Mary McLeod Bethune (born July 10, 1875) was an educator, philanthropist and civil rights activist active in Florida in the first half of the 20th century. Bethune served as an advisor to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was eventually known as the "First Lady of the Struggle" for her key role in advocating civil rights for African Americans.

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Michelle Obama, American first lady (2009–17), the wife of Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States. She was the first African American first lady, and during her time in that post she notably supported military families and promoted healthy eating. Learn more about her life and career.

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Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is a former First Lady of the United States and the wife of the 44th president of the U.S., Barack Obama. She is also a lawyer and an author. She is the first African American First Lady of the United States. Like many other First Ladies, Mrs. Obama has worked as a spokesperson for a cause. The cause she supports is better nutrition and exercise for children. She has done work with the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon to support this cause.

Obama was born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson at Provident Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, Illinois on January 17, 1964.

Robinson's childhood home was on the upper floor of 7436 South Euclid Avenue in Chicago's South Shore community area, which her parents rented from her great-aunt, who had the first floor. She was raised in what she describes as a "conventional" home, with "the mother at home, the father works, you have dinner around the table". Her elementary school was down the street. She and her family enjoyed playing games such as Monopoly, reading, and frequently saw extended family on both sides. She played piano, learning from her great-aunt, who was a piano teacher. The Robinsons attended services at nearby South Shore United Methodist Church. They used to vacation in a rustic cabin in White Cloud, Michigan. She and her 21-month-older brother, Craig, skipped the second grade.

Her father suffered from multiple sclerosis, which had a profound emotional effect on her as she was growing up. She was determined to stay out of trouble and be a good student, which was what her father wanted for her. By sixth grade, Michelle joined a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School (later renamed Bouchet Academy). She attended Whitney Young High School, Chicago's first magnet high school, established as a selective enrollment school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita. The round-trip commute from the Robinsons' South Side home to the Near West Side, where the school was located, took three hours.

Michelle recalled being fearful of how others would perceive her, but disregarded any negativity around her and used it "to fuel me, to keep me going". She recalled facing gender discrimination growing up, saying, for example, that rather than asking her for her opinion on a given subject, people commonly tended to ask what her older brother thought. She was on the honor roll for four years, took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and served as student council treasurer. She graduated in 1981 as the salutatorian of her class.

Michele Obama became a lawyer after graduating from law school. While working at the law firm Sidley Austin, she met her future husband.

In 1991, she left the company to work in the mayor's office as an Assistant to the Mayor, then she pursued various jobs outside the city including executive director, associate dean and executive vice president.

After her husband's inauguration, she focused on lifestyle and fitness, and she launched the Let's Move campaign to eliminate childhood obesity. Her approval rating was 71% in March of 2010.

Meeting Barack Obama

She met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin LLP. She was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate. Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.She and Barack Obama were married on October 3, 1992, and they have two children, Malia (born July 4, 1998) and Sasha (born June 10, 2001).

For a long time, she lived in Chicago with her family. Then, her husband became a junior Senator for the State of Illinois. After that, he ran for president of the USA and won. Michelle became the First Lady of the United States and lived in the White House with her husband and two children. Her husband was elected on November 6, 2012, to a second term as president, so she served as First Lady until January 20, 2017.

On September 17, 2014, Obama visited St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Kids there asked her questions. She said when she was asked who in her family that she liked to prank the most that her husband was the person, also saying they love to scare each other. Their daughters also try to scare them. She also said the Truman Balcony is her favorite part of the White House. When asked about what she liked most about being First Lady of the United States, she answered that she enjoyed meeting the Pope and also spoke of being around Beyoncé and her fans at one of her concerts. She showed how excited she was by saying "Oh, my stars!"

Michelle Obama's brother, Craig Robinson, is the head coach of the Oregon State University men's basketball team. Her father, Fraser Robinson, was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. Her mother Marion Robinson stayed home to raise her and her brother Craig. Her children are Sasha and Malia Ann Obama.

These books were written or ghostwritten and published by Michelle Obama while she was First Lady and afterwards:

American Grown. New York: Crown Publishing Group. 2012. ISBN 978-0307956026.

Becoming. New York: Crown Publishing Group. 2018. ISBN 978-1524763138.

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. New York: Crown Publishing Group. 2022. ISBN 978-0593237465.

Michelle Obama quotes

"I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them."

"When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high."

"Strong men, men who are truly role models, don't need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful."

"Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude."

"Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own."

Interesting facts about Michelle Obama

She was the first African American first lady of the United States of America.

Her brother Craig is only 21 months older than her so people thought they were twins when they were growing up.

Michelle Obama served as a role model for women.

She worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating.

Michelle Obama began the Let's Move! campaign to help stop the United State's childhood obesity epidemic.

She supported American designers and was considered a fashion icon.

Michelle skipped second grade.

Michelle Obama isn't a fan of the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?", because she believes you continue to grow, change, learn and do different things even as an adult.

Images for kids

In Spanish: Michelle Obama para niños

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Mary McLeod Bethune." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. " Mary McLeod Bethune." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune.

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Pioneering educator and college founder Mary McLeod Bethune set educational standards for today's Black colleges and served as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Discover more about her on womenshistory.org.

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Frederick Douglass - Journalist & Civil Rights Activist | Mini Bio | BIO

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Mary McLeod Bethune, Civil Rights Activist | Biography

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Michelle Obama - First African American First Lady | Mini Bio| Biography

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Louis Armstrong: Broke Down Barriers for African American Artists | Biography