This Black History Month, we will be celebrating the contribution of Taraji P. Henson, an American actress, singer, and producer, who is among one of the many Black people who has achieved great things through her works in the media and arts.
Henson started her acting career in 1992 and some of her notable works since then were Karate Kid (2010) with Jaeden Smith who played as her son, Empire (2015) as Cookie Lyon, and Hidden Figures (2016) where she played as Katherine Johnson, who was one of the first African Americans to be in NASA.
She also debuted as a singer in the film Hustle & Flow and is the executive producer of films Proud Mary, What Men Want, and a documentary Going to Mars: A Nikki Giovanni Project. Henson also is a director of films such as Two Faced and Tell It Like A Woman.
Henson was born on September 11, 1970 in Washington D.C. to Boris Henson and Bernice Gordon. Initially she was studying at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University to study electrical engineering until she failed a class and it prompted her to study acting in Howard University.
According to Henson, she paid for her own education by working at multiple jobs.
“I put myself through college. I worked at the Pentagon during the early part of the day, the middle part of the day I went to school full-time, and at night I was a singing-dancing waitress on this small dinner cruise called the Spirit of Washington,” Henson said in an Interview with Vanity Fair.
In 2023, Henson was recognized as one of the Women of the Year and she spoke against the unfair wages of women of color in the entertainment industry.
“… I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to. The math ain’t mathing. And when you start working a lot, you have a team. Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone. It’s a whole entire team behind us. They have to get paid,” Henson expresses her frustration toward the wage inequality in an interview with Gayle King.
She was not the only actor who had spoken about this issue. Many other actors also had spoken about this and most of them showed agreement with her through social media.
Through her works, Henson was the first ever black person to win the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. She also won a Golden Globe for Best Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award and three Primetime Emmy Awards.
