The Archive · Legacy
Raven Wilkinson
The Ballerina Who Danced Through the Jim Crow South
1935 – 2018
Dance Mogul Magazine · Legacy Series
Introduction
Raven Wilkinson wanted one thing: to dance ballet. That desire, in 1950s America, was enough to put her life in danger. In 1955, she became the first African American woman to be signed as a full-time member of a major touring ballet company when she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. For the next six years, she toured the United States, performing in cities across the segregated South where the Ku Klux Klan was actively targeting venues that featured Black performers. She danced Les Sylphides in theaters surrounded by racial terror. She danced because the alternative — not dancing — was unacceptable to her.
Historical Context
Wilkinson was born in New York City in 1935 to a family of mixed racial heritage. She was light-skinned, which allowed her to pass in certain contexts — a fact that both facilitated her entry into the Ballet Russe and complicated her experience within it. She auditioned three times before being accepted, and when she joined the company, the question of her race was an open secret that the company managed through silence and strategic avoidance.
When the company toured the Deep South, that silence became untenable. In Montgomery, Alabama and other cities, the KKK threatened violence against any venue that allowed a Black performer on stage. Wilkinson was hidden in hotel rooms while the company performed. On some occasions, she was told not to appear. On others, she danced anyway, knowing the risk. The company eventually asked her to leave — not because of her dancing, which was never in question, but because her presence endangered the tour. She departed in 1961.
Unable to find a position with an American company willing to employ a Black ballerina, Wilkinson moved to Europe. She danced with the Dutch National Ballet for six years, performing roles that no American company would give her. She returned to the United States in the late 1960s and eventually joined the New York City Opera ballet, where she danced until her retirement.
She danced Les Sylphides in theaters surrounded by racial terror. She danced because the alternative — not dancing — was unacceptable to her.
Cultural Impact Across Generations
Wilkinson’s story was largely unknown for decades. She lived quietly in New York, and the ballet world did not go looking for her. That changed in the 2010s when Misty Copeland, who was on the verge of becoming the first Black female principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, publicly credited Wilkinson as her mentor and inspiration. Copeland sought Wilkinson out, built a friendship with her, and repeatedly cited her as the person who made her own achievement possible.
The connection between Wilkinson and Copeland is one of the most important intergenerational links in ballet history. It demonstrates that representation is not abstract — it is transmitted through direct human relationships. Copeland did not just draw inspiration from Wilkinson’s story. She drew strength from her presence. Wilkinson attended Copeland’s performances, offered counsel, and lived to see a Black woman achieve what she herself had been denied.
Wilkinson’s legacy also forces a reckoning with the specific ways ballet excluded Black dancers. She was not rejected for lack of ability. She was forced out by racial terrorism. The distinction matters. The narrative that Black dancers were simply “not present” in mid-century ballet erases the active violence that kept them out.
Key Legacy
Raven Wilkinson was the first Black woman to dance full-time with a major American ballet company. She endured KKK threats, institutional abandonment, and exile to Europe before returning to dance in New York. Her mentorship of Misty Copeland created a direct intergenerational link that shaped the most visible breakthrough in Black ballet of the twenty-first century.
Value to Society
Wilkinson died in 2018 at the age of eighty-three. In her final years, she received long-overdue recognition, including honors from the Dance Theatre of Harlem and American Ballet Theatre. But the decades of invisibility that preceded that recognition are the real story. Wilkinson’s career was interrupted not by a lack of talent or dedication but by the organized violence of white supremacy. That fact must be part of any honest teaching of ballet history in America.
Her story also speaks to the quiet resilience required to survive as a Black artist in a hostile environment. Wilkinson did not lead marches or give speeches. She danced. She endured. She waited. And when a young dancer named Misty Copeland came looking for someone who understood what she was going through, Wilkinson was there. That kind of persistence — unglamorous, undocumented, and utterly essential — is its own form of heroism.
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