The HistoryMakers founder and executive director to be honored at Black Enterprise’s Women of Power Summit

The HistoryMakers founder and executive director to be honored at Black Enterprise’s Women of Power Summit

     The HistoryMakers’ Founder and Executive Director, Julieanna Richardson, will receive Black Enterprise’s highest recognition of women’s achievement, the Legacy Awards at the 2014 Women of Power Summit on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014 in Boca Raton, Fla.

Other honorees who will be recognized at the 2014 Women of Power Summit Legacy Awards Dinner include legendary award-winning actress, Cicely Tyson; Valerie Daniels-Carter, co-founder, president & CEO of V&J Holding Companies; journalist, civil rights activist, former chair-woman of the NAACP, Myrlie Evers-Williams; Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund.

The Women of Power Summit is the nation’s No. 1 executive development and leadership conference for women of color, annually attracting more than 700 corporate executives, professionals and businesswomen from across the country.

Past Legacy Award recipients include luminaries such as the late National Council of Negro Women Chair and civil rights icon Dr. Dorothy Height; former Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Artistic Director Judith Jamison; Federal Express Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Cathy Ross and former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. In 2012, a Legacy Award was named for the late Barbara Graves, wife of Black Enterprise Founder Earl Graves, Sr. and a former educator, to be presented annually for outstanding achievement and service in education and other areas of service to young people.

Cicely Tyson, legendary award-winning actress, one of the greatest of her generation. Among her many achievements, Tyson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the Golden Globe Award for her performance as Rebecca Morgan in Sounder (1972).

She starred in The Auto-biography of Miss Jane Pitt-man (1974), for which she won two Emmy Awards. Throughout her career she has been nominated for nine Prime-time Emmy Awards, winning three.

She starred on Broadway in The Trip to Bountiful as Carrie Watts, for which she won the Tony Award, Outer Critics Award, and Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Play. 

     Valerie Daniels-Carter, co-founder, president & CEO, V&J Holding Companies. Along with her brother, John Carter, Daniels-Carter founded Milwaukee-based V&J Holdings as a holding company for owner-ship of franchised quick-service restaurants, beginning with a single Burger King franchise in 1982. Today, V&J Holdings employs 4,000 people and owns 36 Burger Kings and nearly 70 Pizza Huts, along with several Häagen-Dazs, Coffee Beanery and Aunty Anne’s Pretzel stores (the last in partnership with NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal). V&J Holdings is one of the nation’s largest Black-owned companies, ranked at No. 33 on the 2013 Black Enterprise Industrial/Service 100 list. Daniels-Carter is recognized among the nation’s most inspirational entrepreneurs. 

            Myrlie Evers-Williams, journalist, civil rights activist, former chairwoman of the NAACP.

Evers is the extraordinary civil rights activist and journalist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the murder of her civil rights activist husband Medgar Evers in 1963. She was also chairwoman of the NAACP, and published several books on topics related to civil rights and her husband’s legacy. On Jan. 21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. As chair of the NAACP, Evers is credited with restoring both the image and the financial stability of the nation’s most accomplished civil rights organization, earning the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1998.

Julieanna Richardson, founder and executive director, The HistoryMakers, America’s largest African American video oral history collection. Richardson, who holds a J.D. degree from Harvard and once practiced corporate law, followed a unique path in heading up the largest national collection effort of African American video oral histories on record. With a diverse background in theatre, television production, and the cable television industries, she combined her various work experiences and her passion for history to conceptualize, found and build The HistoryMakers. The HistoryMakers is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit educational institution based in Chicago, committed to preserving, developing, and providing easy access to an internationally recognized archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories.

Marian Wright Edelman (Barbara Graves honoree), founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. Edelman, an American activist for the rights of children and against the Second Amendment, was the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She began practicing law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.’s Mississippi office, working on racial justice issues connected with the civil rights movement and representing activists during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. In 1973, she founded the Children’s Defense Fund as a voice for poor, minority and disabled children. The organization has served as an advocacy and research center for children’s issues, documenting the problems and possible solutions to children in need. To keep the agency independent, she saw that it was financed entirely with private funds. As founder, leader and principal spokesperson for the CDF, Mrs. Edelman worked to persuade Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are disabled, homeless, abused or neglected.