As a Black woman, Copeland had heard for years that her skin color, her body and her hair didn't conform to what ballerinas were supposed to look like.
Misty Copeland has been a principal ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre since 2015. She took a break from performing due to COVID-19 and the birth of her son in spring 2022, but she hopes to be back on stage in 2023.
When the first surgeon warned her that she might never dance again, Copeland was devastated."It was just like my whole world came crashing down," she says."I felt mostly like I was letting down the Black community." "I must have seen seven or eight surgeons before I found the one that said, 'I see this injury in football players and basketball players that I operate on all the time and I can help you,'" she says."And I said, 'Let's go.'"
Back then, segregation was legally mandated in much of the South, and Wilkinson was not allowed to stay with the rest of the company in hotels or eat with them in restaurants. Ku Klux Klan members once stormed the stage of one of the company's rehearsals, looking for her. Wilkinson eventually quit the company and continued her career outside of America with the Dutch National Ballet. Copeland credits Wilkinson with helping her bridge the gap between her on- and offstage lives.
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