Women’s Hall of Fame honors Aretha Franklin, Morrison, Lacks

SENECA FALLS, N.Y. — “Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin and Nobel laureate and “Beloved” author Toni Morrison will be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame Thursday as part of a posthumous class of Black honorees that also includes Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were widely used in biomedical research; Barbara Hillary, the first Black woman to travel to both the North and South Poles, and civil rights activists Barbara Rose Johns Powell and Mary Church Terrell. “In order to openly acknowledge and amend the disparities within the nomination pool, the virtual induction series will recognize and induct other marginalized women of achievement including those from the Latinx, Asian, Native American, LGBTQ+ sisterhoods, as well as additional Black women,” it said. After just six novels, Morrison in 1993 became the first Black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, earning praise from the Swedish academy for her “visionary force.” In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Morrison a Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was 75 years old when she became the first Black woman to set foot on the North Pole, and stood on the South Pole five years later.