This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest Misty Copeland became the first African-American woman

to become a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, America's National Ballet Company.

That was in 2015, the same year the company celebrated its 75th year. She was the only black woman

in the company for the first 10 years of her career. Among the principal role she danced was the

title role of the Firebird, the Stravinsky Ballet, and the dual role of the Swan Queen and the

black Swan in Swan Lake. Her new memoir is about the pride and pressures of being a first in a

world she describes as refusing to see black people as equals, capable of succeeding in

traditionally quote-European art forms. Her skin color, her body, her hair didn't conform to what

ballerinas were supposed to look like. She was told many times to give up ballet and pursue modern

dance instead, but she became a ballet star and a star outside of ballet. She danced in performance

with Prince on his Welcome to America tour and danced on Broadway in the revival of On the Town.

For her performances and for her work advocating for greater representation in ballet and other art

forms, in 2015, Ty magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Her new memoir, The Wind at My Back, is also about her mentor, Raven Wilkinson, who in 1955

became the first black ballerina to receive a contract with the major ballet company, the ballet

roost de Monte Carlo. Back then, segregation was legally mandated in much of the south. Wilkinson

was not allowed to stay with the rest of the company in hotels or eat with them in restaurants,

and she was frequently immortal danger. Ku Klux Klan members once stormed the stage of one of

the company's rehearsals looking for her. To protect herself and the company from credible threats,

she had to stop touring with them in the south and then quit the company and continue her career

outside of America with the Dutch national ballet. Misty Copeland says her journey would have been

impossible without Wilkinson's career, her example, her love and friendship. Misty Copeland,

...