NEW YORK, CMC – A popular Caribbean magazine in the United States has named Jamaican-American Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph and Grenadian Olympian Kirani James Persons of the Year for 2O23.
On Friday, Herman Hall, the Grenadian-born publisher of the Brooklyn-based Everybody’s Magazine, said Everybody’s Person of the Year includes Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell.
He described Ralph as an actress, singer, producer, activist, and “Jamaican to the bone,” stating that she is “one of the most respected and admired women in the United States.”
“When Miss Ralph sang ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ during the opening ceremonies at the 2023 Super Bowl, millions of Americans, including young Black people, thought it was a new song,” Hall said. “They were oblivious that, for almost a century within African America, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was referred to as ‘The Negro National Anthem’ or ‘Black National Anthem’”.
He said the song, written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson, was “rendered up to the 1960s to open meetings of Black organizations.”
Until she came of age, Hall said, “Sheryl Lee may have sung ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ with her dad, Stanley Ralph, or heard him rendering it at events in Uniondale, Long Island, NY, in churches and at West Indian organizations meetings in Harlem.”
Ralph, born on December 30, 1956, in Waterbury, Connecticut, is the daughter of College Professor Stanley Ralph and Jamaican Fashion Designer Ivy Ralph, O.D., creator of the kariba suit.
Raised between Mandeville, Jamaica, and Long Island, New York, Ralph is renowned for her performances on stage and screen.
Since 2021, she has starred as Barbara Howard on the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary. She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and became the first African-American woman in 35 years to capture the award.
For James, Hall said, “2023 was not his most successful year.”
“Track and field historians will say that, in 2012, James won a Gold Medal at that year’s Olympic Games,” he said. “But 2023 may have been his most significant year.
“After winning Gold in 2012, Silver in 2016, and Bronze in 2020 (21), and when considering his years in regional competitions long before his Olympic debut, it was unbelievable that James competed in global premier track and field events in 2023 and won the 400m dash in September at the Diamond League held in Xiamen, China,” Hall added.
He said James, CBE – born on September 1, 1992, and specializing in the 200 and 400 meters – plans to compete in Paris, “his 4th Olympian presence.”
“His behavior on and off the tracks, mannerisms, and greatness in his sport have made him a role model for Caribbean youth,” Hall said.
He said when James was informed that he was the Person of the Year for 2023, he replied, “I’ll be honest, I’m shocked. It’s an honor. Other people deserve it too; therefore, I represent them.”
James, Grenada’s first and only Olympic medalist, captured the 400m at the World Championships in 2011 and the 2012 London Olympics.
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, he won the silver medal in the 400 meters. He also won the bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, becoming the first man to earn the complete set of three medals in the centennial history of the Olympics.
Hall said Everybody commenced its Person of the Year Award in 1978 on the suggestion of one Helen B. Lucas “to celebrate the magazine’s first anniversary.”
That year, Hall said Janelle Commissiong of Trinidad & Tobago, who, in 1977, became the first woman of color to be crowned Miss Universe, “received the accolades.”
Hall said Commissiong shared the honor with Calypso Rose, “the first woman to shatter the male domination of calypso by winning the 1977 National Calypso King title, thereby forcing the renaming of the prestigious competition to the National Calypso Monarch.”
The Everybody’s publisher said the late St. Lucian Nobel Peace Prize winner and economist Sir Arthur Lewis and his wife attended the magazine’s 1980 dinner in his honor, “celebrating his 1979 Nobel Prize.”
Hall noted that Sir Arthur was the first Black Person to win the Nobel prize for economics. Sir Arthur Lewis died on June 15.
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