Honorary Members
The Society Incorporated Honorary Members share our breadth of commitment and dedication to ensure that young people have opportunities and exposure to the arts. From our first inductee in 2007, Daphne Maxwell Reid, to today, Honorary Members are unique ambassadors to our organization by serving as advisors to our National Executive Board as we grow and expand our chapters throughout the United States. We are blessed that our Honorary Members make themselves available throughout the year to partner and attend programs from our Chapters and serve as a living inspiration to the youth that we serve.
2022 Inductees
Honorary Member
Natalie Baszile
Inducted, June 2022
Author
Natalie Baszile is the author of the novel, Queen Sugar, which is being adapted for a seventh television season by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. In her new non-fiction book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African AmericanFarmers, Land & Legacy, Natalie brings together essays, poems, conversations, portraits,and first-person narratives to tell the story of Black people’s connection to the land from Emancipation to the present.
Natalie has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and is a graduate of WarrenWilson College’s MFA Program for Writers where she was a Holden Minority Scholar. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Natalie has had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and the Djerassi Resident Arts Program where she received the SFFILM and the Bonnie Rattner Fellowships. Her non-fiction work has appeared in National Geographic, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and a number of anthologies. Natalie lives in San Francisco.
Honorary Member
Joan Meyers Brown
Inducted, June 2022
Executive Artistic Director
Since its trailblazing inception in 1970 to address the lack of opportunities for minority dancers, the Philadelphia Dance Company, PHILADANCO!, is credited with training thousands of dancers who have traversed stages in the Americas, Europe, Asia and beyond. The company’s artistic directors, choreographers and dancers, have cultivated a reputation for a dance repertory with passion, power, skill and diversity that has catapulted PHILADANCO! into the limelight all over the world.
Under the leadership of its Founder and Artistic Director Joan Myers Brown, PHILADANCO! has never lost sight of this mission, serving as the resident company of The Kimmel Center while maintaining its roots in the heart of West Philadelphia. It all began with a vision to present the highest quality of professional dance performance along with improving the skills of emerging and professional dancers and choreographers in a nurturing environment, while increasing the appreciation of dance among its many communities.
A biography titled, Joan Myers Brown & The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance, highlights the achievements of PHILADANCO!. The author details the hardships and artistic advances of African-Americans seeking to create opportunities for dancers of all races in the 20th and 21st centuries. At center stage is Joan Myers Brown, challenging those who would say “stay in your place” with poise and grace.
Celebrated by President Obama in 2012 with the prestigious National Medal of Arts, Joan Myers Brown has emerged as an icon, ushering PHILADANCO! onto a global stage and establishing it as a haven for aspiring dancers and choreographers historically denied the spotlight.
Honorary Member
Victoria Christopher Murray
Inducted, June 2022
Author
After graduating from Hampton University, Victoria spent ten years in corporate America with a financial services agency managing the number one division, before she answered her lifelong calling and passion to write full time. Early on in her writing career, Victoria was dubbed as a Christian Fiction author which had its benefits, because no one else was writing fictional stories with spiritual messages at that time.
Victoria self-published her first novel, Temptation in 1997, followed by 7 more before landing a contract with Time Warner who published that same novel in 2000. Temptation made numerous best sellers lists, and was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Literature. Since then, Victoria has trailblazed the literary scene penning more than 30 novels with the Simon and Schuster Publishing Company. She also co-writes with other authors and ghostwrites for top talent across the country. Her novels address difficult personal and professional decisions, from an African American Christian Contemporary perspective.
Victoria has received numerous awards including the Golden Pen Award for Best Inspirational Fiction and the Phyllis Wheatley Trailblazer Award for being a pioneer in African American Fiction. Since 2007, Victoria has won 9 African American Literary Awards for best novel, best Christian fiction and Female Author of the Year. Victoria also won an NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Literary Work for her social commentary novel, Stand Your Ground. which was also named a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Her most recent novel The Personal Librarian, which she co-authored with Heather Terrell, has been on the New York Times best seller’s list, since its debut in 2021, where it has been claimed historical fiction at its best!
Several of Victoria’s novels have been optioned for television by Bishop T.D. Jakes, to become movies from her Seven Deadly Sins series. Four of her books have premiered in April of 2021 and 2022 on the Lifetime Channel.
Victoria along with one of her writing partners ReShonda Tate-Billingsley, launched BrownGirl Publishing Company in 2014. Their publishing company provides a place in the literary world where the female authors they mentor and inspire, young or seasoned, can maximize their voice. Victoria stays busy with her writing, book tours, speaking engagements and writing workshops offered throughout the year, for anyone who wants to get started in the novel writing business. She will be the first to tell you, that not even she, could have imagined how her career would morph into a dream even beyond her imagination..
Honorary Friend
Darryl Archibald
Inducted, June 2022
Music Director/Conductor
Is an award winning conductor, musical director, composer and orchestrator. He studied flute (a degree in flute performance from USC), piano and violin. Mr. Archibald has musical directed and conducted everything from the opera Die Fledermaus to the hit Broadway musical Motown, in which he musical directed, conducted and played keyboard in both the Broadway and National tour. Mr. Archibald will also serve as a vocal coach and assistant conductor, as he did in the Broadway tour of The Lion King.
As an Orchestrator, a trained musical professional, he will adapt, arrange, and organize, for special or maximum effect, a composer’s musical sketch into a score for orchestra, ensemble, or choral group, assigning the instruments and voices according to the composer’s intention. His arrangements and orchestrations have been heard on television, in live performance and even accompanying “dancing fountains”. Darryl has been nominated and the winner of numerous awards as a Musical Director. His credits include, but are not limited to: Some Like It Hot on Broadway fall 2022 (Shubert Theater); Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ (pre Broadway engagement - The Old Globe); Encore! (Disney+); Passion (Boston Court); Little Shop Of Horrors with M.J. Rodriguez (Pasadena Playhouse); The Color Purple (2015 Revival) Broadway tour; Motown The Musical on Broadway 2016 (Nederlander Theater) and national tours; Memphis Broadway tour; Dreamgirls national tour (associate conductor); Disney’s The Lion King Broadway tour (vocal coach/assistant conductor); Wicked at the Pantages Theater (substitute conductor); Beauty And The Beast (McCoy/ Rigby); Ragtime (Pasadena Playhouse); The Wiz (The Muny); Dear World with Tyne Daly (VPAC); Jonathan Dove’s Innocence (Banff Centre and Manhattan Theatre Club); Nightmare Alley - workshop (The Geffen Playhouse); In The Heights (TUTS); Swing! (Sacramento Music Circus); Smokey Joe’s Café, Serrano - workshop with James Barbour and directed by Joel Zwick (El Portal Theater); I Married Wyatt Earp - workshop with Carole Cook and Carol Lawrence (Wadsworth Theater); In The Heights, The Producers, Legally Blonde, Kiss Me Kate with Davis Gaines, White Christmas, Funny Girl with Stephanie J. Block, and so much more.
Darryl Archibald is a Founding Member of the non-profit organization MUSE (Musicians United for Social Equity). Muse is committed to creating diversity within the music departments of the theatre industry by providing access, internships, mentorships, and support to historically marginalized people of color.
Honorary Friend
Kevin Cole
Inducted, June 2022
Artist/Educator
Kevin Cole received his B.S. from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and an M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University. Within the last 32 years, he has received 27 grants and fellowships, 66 awards in art, 51 teaching awards. He just received the Working Artist Fellowship from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. On February 1, 2022, he received a Proclamation from the City of South Fulton proclaiming February 1, 2022, Kevin Cole Day.
In December Mr. Cole received the 2020 Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities in the State of Georgia and the 2019 Nexus Award from the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta. In July he received the Working Artist Fellowship from MOCAG. In April Mr. Cole received the Art Aspiration Award by the National Society Incorporation for his dedication to students’ achievements. The 2020 Trail Blazer Award from Salem Bible Church, in Atlanta, GA. His artwork has been featured in more than 490 exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. Cole’s artwork is included in more than 4000 public, private, and corporate collections throughout the United States and abroad. Public collections include the new National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, The Georgia Museum, Athens, GA, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.; William Jefferson Clinton Library, Little Rock, Ark.; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Ark.; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CN.; The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, La.; The David C Driskell Center University of Maryland at College Park; Dayton Institute of Art, Dayton, Ohio; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, Pa.; The Georgia Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta, Ga.; Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Tampa Museum in Tampa, Fla. Corporate collections include Bank of America, Charlotte, N.C.; IBM, N.Y. and King and Spaulding Law Firm, Atlanta, Ga. Private collectors include Michael Jordan and John and Monica Pearson of Atlanta. Cole has also created more than 45 public art works, including the Coca-Cola Centennial Olympic Mural for the 1996 Olympic Games.
His artwork has been featured in more than 125 publications, recently The Guardian Magazine in Paris, France in Scholastic Art with Dale Chihuly as well as The Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, The Union Tribune in San Diego, CA, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta and most recently Forbes Magazine.
Honorary Friend
Michael Manson
Inducted, June, 2022
Jazz Musician, Executive Director
Michael Manson is a musician and educator with worldwide acclaim. He is the founder and executive director of Musical Arts Institute, located on the South Side of Chicago, where musical instruction and mentorship is provided to underprivileged youth of this community. Michael, whose instrument is the bass, has had the privilege of performing all around the globe. His professional music career spans over 35 years and he has performed and/or recorded with many recognized names in the music industry including Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau, Kirk Whalum, Gerald Albright, David Sanborn, Joe Sample, Roberta Flack, The Winans, Jessy Dixon, Tramaine Hawkins, George Duke, James Cleveland, Brian Culbertson, Steve Cole, Rick Braun, Norman Brown and Diane Reeves, just to name a few. Grammy award winner and Jazz/R&B keyboardist, the late George Duke, was Michael’s most important mentor for over 17 years. A Chicago native, Michael Manson received a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Chicago State University, and a Master of Music in Music Education with emphasis on Orchestra Conducting from Northwestern University. He continues to sharpen his skills in the field of music education technology at the Vandercook College of Music.
After teaching in the traditional public school system for over 16 years, Michael felt an overwhelming need to establish an environment where even the most socioeconomically or educationally disadvantaged students could come and find a nurturing but challenging place to explore themselves through the art and discipline of music. The vision that he shared with his wife, Lana Manson came to life in January 2010 when The Musical Arts Institute (MAI) was incorporated. Together with his wife Lana, who serves as Co-Director and CFO, the couple has assembled an amazing staff of 24 instructors who serve 114 students. Most of the student’s fees are funded through need-based or merit scholarships. In addition, the Musical Arts Institute has satellite programs in 17 area Chicago Public Schools and community organizations that have demonstrated a desire for music instruction but lack the resources to provide a structured program. MAI also provides instruction to the community at large, including a senior group who meet once per week.
The Chicago Chapter for the Arts has been a partner with the Manson’s and Musical Arts Institute (MAI) for the last five years.
2021 Inductee
Honorary Friend
Jonathan Green
Inducted, March 2021
Artist
Jonathan Green was born in Gardens Corner, a rural area along South Carolina’s southern coast. He is the first individual of Gullah ancestry to train at a professional art school. He has created an acclaimed body of work that documents his rural culture, which emerged among West African slaves who lived on the Sea Islands of South Carolina.
After his discharge from the United States Air Force, he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from which he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1982.
With a renewed appreciation for his heritage after his years away from South Carolina, Mr. Green decided to create art that honored the culture in which he grew up. His explorations of Gullah traditions are documentation of the daily rituals of people’s lives in a traditional African American community unmarked by the process of assimilation. He often paints people working their fields, fishing at the shore, dancing, swimming or going to church. Mr. Green’s paintings are noted for their masterful combination of pattern and abstract color spaces. This is well exemplified in “Pride”, an oil painting he created in which a woman and two girls in striped dresses and ribbons sit in a leaf-printed chair on a patterned carpet, all against wallpaper printed with huge roses and leaves.
Mr. Green's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and has been placed in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Morris Museum in Augusta, Ga, the African American Museum of Philadelphia, Penn., the Naples Museum of Arts in Naples, FL, the IFCC Cultural Center in Portland, Oregon. In 2005 the Columbia, South Carolina City Ballet presented a new ballet based on Mr. Green's work, entitled “Off the Wall and Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green.”
In 1996 Mr. Green received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Carolina. He has received numerous awards including the Martin Luther King, Junior Humanitarian Award from the City of Beaufort, South Carolina in 1993; the Clemente C. Pickney Award from the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1997; A History Makers Award in the Fine Arts in 2002; the Order of the Palmetto Award in 2002; the Man of Distinction Award from the Education Foundation of Collier County in 2003 and the Century of Achievement Award from the Museum of the Americas in 2003.
2018 Inductee
Honorary Friend
David C. Driskell
Inducted, October 2018
Artist and Scholar
The Society, Incorporated, mourns the death of our Honorary Friend Dr. David C. Driskell in a special message. Download the PDF.
One of the world’s leading authorities on the subject of African-American Art, Professor David C. Driskell is highly regarded as both an artist and a scholar. Born in 1931 in Eatonton, Georgia, he grew up in North Carolina and completed the art program at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 1953. He passed April 1, 2020.
He received an undergraduate degree in art from Howard University in 1955 and an M.F.A. from Catholic University of America in 1962. He then explored post-graduate study in art history at The Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in The Hague. Trained as a painter and art historian, Mr. Driskell works primarily in collage and mixed media, and printmaking.
Professor Driskell began his teaching career at Talladega College in 1955. He taught at Howard and Fisk Universities and served as Visiting Professor of Art at several universities, including Bowdoin College, The University of Michigan, Queens College, and Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
He joined the faculty of the Department of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1977 and served as its Chairperson from 1978-1983. In 1995, he was named Distinguished University Professor of Art and taught until his retirement in 1998.
The recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and prizes, including three Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships and a Harmon Foundation Fellowship, Professor Driskell has also received thirteen honorary doctoral degrees in art. While teaching at the University of Maryland, he maintained an active career as a practicing artist, teacher, curator, collector, art administrator, and art consultant.
He has lectured across the globe and his works are included in major collections of art museums throughout the world. Professor Driskell has authored five exhibition books on the subject of African-American art, co-authored four others, and published more than 40 catalogues from exhibitions he has curated.
In 1976, Driskell curated the groundbreaking exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950” which has been a foundation for the field of African-American Art History. In 2000, Professor Driskell was honored by President Bill Clinton as one of 12 recipients of the National Humanities Medal.
In 2001, the University of Maryland established the David C. Driskell Center to honor Professor Driskell as an artist, art historian, collector, curator, and scholar. The Center honors Professor Driskell by preserving the rich heritage of African-American visual art and culture.
In 2005, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, established the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award to honor and celebrate contributions to the field of African-American art and art history. In 2007, Professor Driskell was elected as a National Academician by the National Academy.
2015 Inductee
Honorary Member
Virginia Johnson
Inducted, April 2015
Artistic Director, Dance Theatre of Harlem
Virginia Johnson returns to Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) as artistic director having been a founding member and principal dancer. Born in Washington, DC, Johnson graduated from the Academy of the Washington School of Ballet. She briefly attended the School of the Arts at New York University as a University Scholar before joining DTH in 1969.
During her 28 years with the company she performed most of the repertoire, with principal roles in Concerto Barocco, Allegro Brillante, Agon, A Streetcar Named Desire, Fall River Legend, Swan Lake, Giselle, Voluntaries, Les Biches among others.
Three DTH productions in which she danced leading roles were recorded for broadcast: A Streetcar Named Desire for Dance in America on PBS, Creole Giselle, which was the first full-length ballet broadcast on NBC, and Fall River Legend, which won a cable ACE award from the Bravo Network. In addition, she was included in two acclaimed television dance series, Margot Fonteyn’s “The Magic of Dance” and Natalia Makarova’s “Ballerina.”
Her choreographic credits include the television film, Ancient Voices of Children in which she danced and an early, self-produced solo concert for Rae Metzger’s Concert Socials. Later choreographic works include ballets created for Goucher College, Dancers Respond to AIDS, the Second Annual Harlem Festival of the Arts, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center and Marymount Manhattan College, where she was also an adjunct professor. The latter two projects were an outgrowth of Dancers Making Dances, a collaborative choreographic project with former DTH colleagues, Judy Tyrus and Melanie Person.
While still performing, her interest in journalism led her to Fordham University where she continues to pursue a degree in communications. After retiring from performing, she founded POINTE magazine and was editor-in-chief from 2000-2009. The popular publication helps dancers prepare for the professional ballet world developing educational seminars and lectures on health and wellness for dancers, auditions and professional preparation.
Her honors include a Young Achiever Award from the National Council of Women, Outstanding Young Woman of America and the Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award and the Washington Performing Arts Society’s 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award. Highlights of her guest appearances include a tour of Australia with Stars of World Ballet, several appearances at various International Festivals of Dance in Havana Cuba, and with the Royal Ballet at The Royal Opera House in London. Her commitment to community service is maintained through volunteer assignments with New York Cares.
2007 Inductee
Honorary Member
Daphne Maxwell Reid
Inducted, May 2007
Actress, Producer, Designer
Daphne Reid was born in New York City, New York, USA as Daphne Maxwell. She is an actress and producer, known for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990), Frank’s Place (1987) and Coach of the Year (1980).
Ms. Reid is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. She attended Northwestern University, where she attended on a scholarship. While at Northwestern she began a modeling career, and eventually signed with the Eileen Ford modeling agency. She was the first black woman to be on the cover of Glamour magazine.
Also, a costume designer Daphne Maxwell Reid frequently created her own TV wardrobe. Moreover, she once guest-hosted ABC’s The Home Show (1988) where she showed off many of her designs, and subsequently put together a four video and pattern kit entitled “Suddenly You’re Sewing”.She and her husband, actor Tim Reid, once had a syndicated talk show called The Tim and Daphne Show for King World in 1990-1991. She has appeared in numerous television programs. Her best-known role was as Vivian Banks on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1993 to 1996.
Ms. Reid is also an accomplished photographer. With her husband, Tim Reid, she owned New Millennium Studios in Petersburg, Virginia, which they sold in 2017.
On July 31, 2010, she became an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, during their 50th National Convention (Transforming Lives, Impacting Communities) in New Orleans.
In 2007 Ms. Reid became the first Honorary member of the Society, Incorporated. She was inducted at our 11th National Conference in Memphis, Tennessee. The Society Incorporated has been proud to have her as our first Honorary Member.