An award bestowed by the Paul Robeson Citation Award Committee of the Actors' Equity Association

Actors' Equity Association

The Actors' Equity Association , commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing the world of live theatrical performance, as opposed to film and television performance. However, performers appearing on live stage productions without a book or...

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Recipients

1974 Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

1975 Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis was an American film actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist.-Early years:...

 & Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist, perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun and the film American Gangster for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.-Early years:Dee was born Ruby...

1976 Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...

1977 Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...

1978 Sam Jaffe

Sam Jaffe (actor)

Sam Jaffe was an American actor, teacher, musician and engineer. In 1951, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Asphalt Jungle and appeared in other classic films such as Ben-Hur and The Day the Earth Stood Still...

1979 Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte

Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

1980 Alice Childress

Alice Childress

Alice Childress was an American playwright, actor, and author.-Early life:Childress was born in South Carolina, but at age nine, after her parents separated, she moved to Harlem where she lived with her grandmother on 118th Street, between Lenox Avenue and Fifth Avenue...

1981 Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel

Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...

1982 Ed Asner

Ed Asner

Edward Asner , commonly known as Ed Asner, is an American film, television, stage, and voice actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild, primarily known for his Emmy Award-winning role as Lou Grant on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series, Lou Grant...

1983 John Henry Faulk

John Henry Faulk

John Henry Faulk from Austin, Texas was a storyteller and radio show host. His successful lawsuit against blacklisters of the entertainment industry helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist.-Early life:...

1984 Lena Horne

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...

1985 Arthur Mitchell

Arthur Mitchell

Arthur Mitchell may refer to:*Arthur Mitchell antiquary, commissioner of Lunacy*Arthur Mitchell , former England Test cricketer*Arthur Mitchell , African-American dancer and choreographer...

1986 Vinie Burrows

Vinie Burrows

Vinie Burrows is an award-winning Broadway actress.She has been active at the United Nations Economic and Social Council on the issues of the status of women and Southern Africa....

1987 Joe Papp

1988 Jacques d'Amboise

1989 Bill Ross & Dr. Margaret Burroughs

1990 Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...

1991 Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director...

1992 Art D'Lugoff

Art D'Lugoff

Art D'Lugoff was an American jazz impresario. He opened The Village Gate, a jazz club in New York City's Greenwich Village, in 1958...

1993 Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham

Katherine Mary Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator, and activist...

1994 Lloyd Richards

Lloyd Richards

Lloyd George Richards was a Canadian-American theatre director, actor, and dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991, and Yale University professor emeritus.- Biography :...

1995 Gil Noble

Gil Noble

Gil Noble is an American television reporter and interviewer. He was the producer and host of New York City television station WABC-TV's weekly, Like It Is, originally co-hosted with Melba Tolliver...

1996 George C. Wolfe

George C. Wolfe

George Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical, Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk.-Early life and...

1997 Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in English, best known for his political plays opposing the South African system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy-Award winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood...

1998 Leonard de Paul

1999 Loften Mitchell

2000 Rosetta LeNoire

Rosetta LeNoire

Rosetta LeNoire was an American stage, screen, and television actress, as well as a Broadway producer and casting agent....

2001 Brock Peters

Brock Peters

Brock Peters was an American actor, best known for playing the role of Tom Robinson in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird...

2002 Gertrude Jeanette

Gertrude Jeanette

Gertrude Jeannette is an African-American film and stage actress. She was blacklisted during the Red Scare, along with her friend Paul Robeson. She is the founder of the H.A.D.L.E.Y Players in Harlem, New York City, and is active in mentoring African-American actors in New York City.Jeannette was...

2003 Woodie King, Jr.

Woodie King, Jr.

Woodie King, Jr, born 27 July 1937 in Baldwin Springs, Alabama, United States, is a renowned African-American director and producer of stage and screen, as well as the founding director of the New Federal Theater in New York, New York, United States....

2004 Judith Jamison

Judith Jamison

Judith Anna Jamison is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater....

2005 Carl Harms

2006 Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby

William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...

2007 Mercedes Ellington

2008 Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier

Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...