Contribution:
This pioneer was Founder of the Elma Lewis School of the Performing Arts, providing instruction for children in dance, drama, visual arts and music (1950). She founded Playhouse in the Park in 1966, a summer theater program that featured performers such as Duke Ellington. She founded the National Center of African Arts (NCAAA) (1968), an umbrella organization that included a school, jazz and classical orchestras, a chorus, a dance troupe and a museum. She was one of the first MacArthur Foundation Awardees (1981) and received the Presidential Medal for the Arts from Ronald Reagan in 1983.