They did not wait for the world to settle the question of their worth. They kept something sacred for themselves: the authority to know who they were.
They did not wait for the world to settle the question of their worth. They kept something sacred for themselves: the authority to know who they were.
There is an old story about Diana Ross. “Call her Miss Ross.”
Over the years, the story became part of the mythology surrounding her. Diana Ross was supposedly so demanding, so particular, so aware of her own importance that people were expected to address her formally.
Except the story is more complicated than that.
In a 1989 Vanity Fair interview, Ross said, “I never asked anyone to call me Miss Ross.” She remembered people beginning to address her that way during the Supremes years. To her, it signaled that something had changed.
Other people have told different stories. One acquaintance told Vanity Fair that Ross had, in fact, corrected someone who called her Diana.
Maybe both kinds of moments happened.
Human beings are complicated. We behave differently at 25 than we do at 45. We are warmer on some days. More guarded on others. We make mistakes. We grow. We contradict ourselves.
That isn’t the part of the story that interests me most.
I am interested in what happened when a Black woman carried herself as though she expected to be treated with dignity. Because somehow, “Miss Ross” became evidence against Diana Ross.
It helped build the legend of the difficult diva.
Before the World Called Her Miss Ross
Diana Ross was born in Detroit in 1944 and spent part of her childhood in the Brewster-Douglass housing projects.
America has a way of talking about “the projects” as though nothing beautiful grows there. As though poverty tells us something about the value, intelligence, creativity or future of the people living inside it. (Even though people continue to take from it without ever giving back proportionally)
Detroit told another story.
Out of Black Detroit came an extraordinary collection of singers, musicians, songwriters, producers and performers who helped change popular music around the world. And out of that city came Diana Ross.
Before the gowns. Before the international stages. Before Lady Sings the Blues. Before Mahogany. Before people debated whether they should call her Diana or Miss Ross.
There was a Black girl growing up in Detroit who had absolutely no guarantee that America would ever recognize what was inside her.
She could not control what people thought of her. She COULD control what she cultivated within herself.
Motown Was Teaching More Than Choreography
There is a tendency now to look at old photographs of Motown performers and misunderstand what we are seeing.
The gloves. The posture. The gowns. The coordinated movements. The careful speech. The way they entered a room.
Sometimes younger generations interpret that presentation entirely through the lens of white acceptance: Black performers being polished so white audiences would find them acceptable.
Certainly, crossover was part of Motown’s business strategy. Racism shaped the world these artists had to navigate, and none of that should be romanticized. But that explanation is not the end.
Motown’s famous Artist Development Department taught performers how to sit, stand, speak, move and present themselves professionally. The Motown Museum itself describes Berry Gordy’s investment in teaching performers to behave with elegance and refinement “no matter the setting.”
No matter the setting.
Because something else was happening.
They were being taught that wherever they went, they belonged there.
They could walk onto stages that had not been built with Black people in mind and know where to put their feet.
They could sit across from powerful executives and know how to conduct themselves.
They could enter rooms where somebody might underestimate them and refuse to participate in their own diminishment.
Some of those lessons reinforced things many Black families and communities were already teaching.
Stand up straight. Take care of yourself. Know how to enter a room. Learn your craft. Don’t let anybody make you ashamed of where you came from. Your circumstances are not your identity.
There were limitations to respectability politics then, just as there are now. There were pressures placed upon Black people that white performers did not carry in the same way.
But we lose something when we reduce every beautiful dress, carefully chosen word, straightened shoulder and insistence upon dignity to a performance for “white people.”
Mostly Black people were dressing for themselves. They were building themselves. Sometimes they were reminding one another:
You are somebody, where “somebody” means a person who is unique, special, valued, beautiful, and belongs.
They Kept Something for Themselves
Read enough memoirs and biographies from that generation and another thing begins to emerge. These people had problems. Oh, yes.
There were rivalries. Bad decisions. Broken relationships. Addiction. Ego. Hurt. Exploitation. Family wounds. Money troubles. Terrible contracts. Things they did to one another that should never be romanticized.
They were human beings, not monuments.
But there was also something extraordinarily powerful running through that generation of Black artists. A sense of self-possession.
They knew the world might refuse to see them properly. So they did not leave the entire job of seeing themselves to the world.
Your self-worth becomes terribly fragile when everybody else gets a vote.
One person doesn’t like you.
One person misunderstands you.
One person calls you arrogant.
One person remembers your worst day.
One relationship fails.
One employer decides you aren’t valuable.
One group excludes you.
One person tells a story about you that you don’t recognize as yourself.
And suddenly you are standing before a jury that never had the authority to determine your worth in the first place. You can live days that way, but it makes it more challenging to genuinely fall in love with the days that you are living.
Brandy Met the Legend
Now, Brandy, a woman who was also prepared for shining in the spotlight, tells a different story.
Years later, Brandy worked with Diana Ross on the television movie Double Platinum. (Nice feel-good film.)
Brandy had heard the famous story about “Miss Ross.” (Told you, she comes prepared.)
So she went to Diana Ross and told her that she intended to call her Miss Ross. Ross surprised her. According to Brandy, Diana told her she didn’t have to do that.
She could call her Diana. Brandy refused. She called her Miss Ross anyway. Because Brandy believed she had earned that respect.
Years later, Brandy remembered something even more revealing about working with her. Ross corrected her posture. She told her not to chew gum while speaking because it was distracting and unprofessional. (Brandy allowed mentors to mentor her knowing that it could only make her better.)
And Brandy watched Diana Ross establish boundaries around something else: her family.
Ross was a global superstar working on a demanding production, but she arranged the work so she could return home to her younger children. Brandy later remembered being struck by seeing a woman with that degree of power establish a firm boundary around work without apologizing for it.
Because suddenly “Miss Ross” isn’t just about what somebody calls you. It becomes a way of standing inside your own life.
You Will Make Mistakes
There is another lesson here that Survivors especially deserve.
You are going to make mistakes.
You will mishandle something.
You will trust somebody you shouldn’t have trusted.
You will stay too long somewhere.
Leave something too quickly.
Say something badly.
Miss an opportunity.
Have a season when you aren’t your best self.
You may even have to apologize and make amends.
Self-respect does not require pretending otherwise.
Dignity is not perfection. And you cannot spend the rest of your life running behind everybody who formed an opinion of you during a chapter you have already outgrown.
Some people will misunderstand you.
Some people will accurately remember something you wish you had done differently.
Some people will dislike you for reasons you understand.
Some will dislike you for reasons you never will.
Some will call your boundaries arrogance because they benefited from you having none.
Some will decide that knowing your worth means you think you are better than everybody else.
You cannot control that.
Your life’s work cannot become one endless public-relations campaign designed to convince everybody that you are a good person.
There has to be something you keep for yourself.
Give Yourself the Affirmation
This may be one of the great lessons hiding inside those old photographs.
Look again at those women.
Look at Diana Ross.
Look at the Supremes.
Look at the gowns, the posture, the preparation, the discipline.
Don’t merely ask whether America approved of them.
Ask what they were telling themselves.
I am worthy of preparation.
I am worthy of excellence.
I belong in this room.
I will learn what I need to learn.
I will improve what I can improve.
I will not confuse where I started with where I am permitted to go.
I do not need to become perfect before I carry myself with dignity.
And I do not need unanimous approval before I recognize something valuable in myself.
That is different from believing you are above correction.
It is having enough foundation underneath you to survive correction.
Enough self-respect to say, I was wrong, without translating it into, I am worthless.
Enough confidence to learn something new without being ashamed that you didn’t already know it.
Enough dignity to walk away from people who insist that loving you requires your humiliation.
Enough self-knowledge to understand that somebody else’s perception of you is information. It is not ownership.
Diana Ross became one of the most famous women in the world. But before the world could decide what Diana Ross was worth, somebody had to get that young woman from Detroit through the door.
And, somewhere inside that equation was also a woman who learned to occupy her own name.
Maybe that is what I hear differently now when somebody says:
Miss Ross.
A woman who understood that other people would have opinions about her for the rest of her life and kept living anyway.
There will always be somebody asking:
Who does she think she is?
You don’t have to answer them.
But you ought to know the answer for yourself.
They didn’t wait for affirmation.
They gave it to themselves.
**Honor Donald McKayle. The man dancing with Diana Ross in that Soulful Strut performance is not simply a talented television dancer. He is one of the major figures in American modern dance.
Donald McKayle (1930–2018) was a Black American dancer, choreographer, director, teacher and Broadway artist whose career crossed concert dance, television, Hollywood and musical theater. The Dance Heritage Coalition named him one of “America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.” His works include Games, District Storyville, Songs of the Disinherited and his 1959 masterpiece Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder, a devastating work about Black men on a Southern chain gang.
His choreography has been carried by companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
He worked on Broadway, film and television; received five Tony nominations; directed and choreographed Raisin, the Tony-winning musical based on A Raisin in the Sun; choreographed Sophisticated Ladies; worked on films including The Great White Hope and Bedknobs and Broomsticks; and became a major dance educator. The Kennedy Center honored him as a Master of African American Choreography in 2005.
 McKayle choreographed this “Soulful Strut” number himself. Â
At the time of this performance, he had largely retired from performing, but in 1969, at Diana Ross’s request, the 39-year-old McKayle returned to dancing to partner her. The performance aired on The Hollywood Palace on March 8, 1969.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9bq5W_-nE&list=RD5b9bq5W_-nE&start_radio=1
Both links are great but for different reasons. The TALENT from both dancers!