You can read our question-and-answer section here. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ralph as part of the USA TODAY Women of the Year project. A time when people did not respect the youth of a Black child or a Black person, period." And the '60s were a very difficult, ugly time in America. "I often tell people I do not look like my journey," Ralph said. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were all fatally shot in the head. She watched when Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John F. She watched the images of college-aged civil rights freedom fighters being murdered. "She was just going to break my fingers – my fourth-grade fingers," Ralph told me.Īt home, Ralph watched on television as dogs were released on kids who looked like her and were not much older than her.
"I don't have to take students like you," she told Ralph before slamming the lid of the piano, narrowly missing Ralph's hands. She was the only Black girl in the school.Ī teacher, a nun, a so-called woman of God, chastised her for not practicing piano. She recalls attending Notre Dame Academy in Waterbury, Connecticut, where she lived with her family before splitting their time between Long Island, New York and Mandeville, Jamaica. There have been many moments, many years, when Sheryl Lee Ralph didn't feel seen or heard.Įven before Ralph made her way onto screens big and small, before she waited in the wings to take the stage on Broadway, she had to fight to have a voice, to be respected.
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