Two Ku Klux Klan members stormed a rehearsal in Montgomery, Alabama, demanding to know: “Where is the black woman?” Her fellow dancers shielded her, and Raven Wilkinson kept dancing. She was the first Black woman to dance full-time with a major American ballet company — and the danger that followed her across the Jim Crow South is the price tag on that “first” that the history books tend to leave off.
Wilkinson was born in Harlem in 1935. She auditioned for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and was rejected twice before the company signed her in 1955, at 20 years old — the first Black woman to dance full-time with a major American ballet company. In her second year she was promoted to soloist. Management told her never to discuss her race publicly, and on stage she was made to lighten her skin with makeup: the company wanted her talent in the corps and her identity out of the program.
Then the company toured the South, and the arrangement met reality. In 1957, an Atlanta hotel owner demanded to know if she was Black — and when she refused to answer, exiled her to a separate hotel from her own company. In Montgomery, the Klan came into a rehearsal looking for her by description, and the dancers around her closed ranks. She was 22 years old, in pointe shoes, being hunted through the South for the crime of dancing in a company that had hired her.
She kept dancing — for decades, on two continents
Wilkinson left the Ballet Russe in 1961. She danced seven years with the Dutch National Ballet, beginning in 1966 — appreciated in Amsterdam in a way Montgomery had never offered — and later performed as a character dancer with the New York City Opera. The career the Klan tried to interrupt ran for decades, on two continents.
And then the story bends toward its most beautiful symmetry. Decades later, Wilkinson became a mentor to a young dancer named Misty Copeland — whose own story this page has told. Wilkinson wrote the foreword to Copeland’s picture-book biography of her, Trailblazer, in 2018, and when Copeland made her Swan Lake principal debut, it was Raven Wilkinson who presented her with flowers. The woman the Klan hunted in 1957 handed roses to the first Black principal ballerina at American Ballet Theatre. That is not a footnote. That is a torch, photographed mid-pass.
Raven Wilkinson died on December 17, 2018, at 83. She kept dancing. The door she held open at the cost of her own safety is the one the whole art form now walks through.
Join the conversation
She was exiled to a separate hotel and hunted by the Klan — for dancing ballet. Had you heard Raven Wilkinson’s name before Misty Copeland’s fame carried it back? And who held a dangerous door open for YOU? Tell us below.
Source note: Raven Wilkinson’s account — born in Harlem in 1935; rejected twice by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo before being signed in 1955 at age 20 as the first Black woman to dance full-time with a major American ballet company, promoted to soloist in her second year; management’s instruction never to discuss her race publicly and her lightening her skin with makeup on stage; the 1957 Atlanta hotel owner demanding to know if she was Black and exiling her to a separate hotel when she refused to answer; two Ku Klux Klan members storming a Montgomery, Alabama rehearsal demanding “Where is the black woman?” while her fellow dancers shielded her; her leaving the company in 1961, dancing seven years with the Dutch National Ballet from 1966, and later performing as a character dancer with the New York City Opera; her mentorship of Misty Copeland, her foreword to Copeland’s picture-book biography of her (Trailblazer, 2018), and her presenting Copeland with flowers at her Swan Lake principal debut; and her death on December 17, 2018, at 83 — is from the Dance Mogul profile, Granma’s obituary reporting, Because of Them We Can, and the Trailblazer book record (Little, Brown, 2018).
