Herman Hall, the Grenadian-born publisher of the Brooklyn-based Everybody’s Magazine, has been expanding on naming Jamaican-American Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph and Grenadian Olympian Kirani James Persons of the Year for 2O23.
The popular Caribbean-themed magazine on Thursday named Ralph and James as recipients of the annual award.
Hall noted that previous Everybody’s Person of the Year included Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell.
“Most of this magazine readers today are first-and second-generation Caribbean-Americans,” he told Caribbean Life exclusively on Saturday. “They were born and raised in America. “Therefore, their nominations are not necessarily someone born and raised in the region.
“Sheryl Lee Ralph gets many votes each year, but, in 2023, she received a record amount,” he added. “May I say, Sheryl Lee Ralph has been on the cover of Everybody’s Magazine several times. 2023, the world saw her when she sang the Negro National or Spiritual Anthem at the Superbowl. Decades before, her father frequently rendered the song at West Indian organizations in Harlem.
“Although Sheryl’s parents were early subscribers of Everybody’s, I never knew their daughter was in show biz (business) until we ran Sheryl on the cover, when she was in a 1980s Sitcom on NBC TV,” Hall continued.
On James, he said: “As a Grenadian, it hurts me that Kirani couldn’t be Everybody’s Person of the Year for 2012. He had achieved so much when he won Gold at the Olympics, the first Grenadian to be successful at the Olympics. But 2012 belonged to Usain Bolt (the Jamaican Olympian).
“In 2023, Kirani received a record number of nominations, including Jamaicans, who frequently vote for their athletes,” Hall disclosed. “Kirani triumphed at the major world track and field event in 2023.
“I am a Caribbean person and a Grenadian. Kirani went to the same two schools I attended, the St. John’s Anglican Primary School and the Grenada Boys Secondary School,” Hall added. “He ran and played in Windsor Park, Gouyave, where I, too, ran and played in the 1950s.
“I was relieved when I saw the numerous votes James received,” he continued. “He is presently training for the 2023 Paris Olympics, his fourth. Let us all wish him success.”
Hall described Ralph as not only an actress but as a singer, producer, activist and “Jamaican to the bone,” stating that she is “one of the most respected and admired women in the United States.”
“When Miss Ralph sang ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ during the opening ceremonies at the 2023 Super Bowl, millions of Americans, including young Black people, thought it was a new song,” Hall said. “They were oblivious that, for almost a century within African America, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was referred to as ‘The Negro National Anthem’ or ‘Black National Anthem’”.
He said the song, written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson, was “rendered up to the 1960s to open meetings of Black organizations.”
Until she came of age, Hall said “Sheryl Lee may have sung ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ with her dad, Stanley Ralph, or heard him rendering it at events in Uniondale, Long Is., NY, in churches and at West Indian organizations meetings in Harlem.”
Ralph, who was born on Dec. 30, 1956 in Waterbury, Conn., is the daughter of College Professor Stanley Ralph and Jamaican Fashion Designer Ivy Ralph, O.D., creator of the kariba suit, according to Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia.
Raised between Mandeville, Jamaica, and Long Is., Ralph is “renowned for her performances on stage and screen,” Wikipedia said.
Since 2021, it said Ralph has starred as Barbara Howard on the ABC mockumentary sitcom Abbott Elementary, receiving the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and becoming “the first African-American woman in 35 years to capture the award.”
For James, Hall said “2023 was not his most successful year.”
“Track and field historians will say that, in 2012, James won a Gold Medal at that year’s Olympic Games,” he said. “But 2023 may have been his most significant year.
“After winning Gold in 2012, Silver in 2016 and Bronze in 2020 (21), and when considering his years in regional competitions long before his Olympic debut, it was unbelievable that James competed in global premier track and field events in 2023 and won the 400m dash in September at the Diamond League held in Xiamen, China,” Hall added.
He said James, CBE – who was born on Sept. 1, 1992 and specializes in the 200 and 400 meters – plans to compete in Paris, “his 4th Olympian presence.”
“His behavior on and off the tracks, mannerisms and greatness in his sport have made him a role model for Caribbean youth,” Hall said.
He said when James was informed that he is the Person of the Year for 2023, he replied, “’I’ll be honest, I’m really surprised. It’s an honor. Other people deserve it too; therefore, I represent them.’”
James, Grenada’s first and only Olympic medalist, captured the 400m at the World Championships in 2011, and the 2012 London Olympics, Wikipedia said.
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, it said James won the silver medal in the 400 meters. He also won the bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, “becoming the first man to earn the full set of three medals in the centennial history of the Olympics,” Wikipedia said.
Beginning in September every year, Hall said Everybody’s invites its readers to suggest someone or event for Person of the Year.
“There was a year when two hurricanes were our phenomenon of the year,” he said. “Remember, we have been announcing a Person of the Year since 1978. At that time, it was called ‘Man of the Year’ and ‘Woman of the Year’.
“In the old days, we actually had a dinner in their honor, with the proceeds going to charitable and educational institutions,” Hall added. “Recipients who attended the Gala in their honor included Sir Arthur Lewis, when he won the Nobel Prize; Eugenia Charles, when she became the first woman to head a government in a CARICOM (Caribbean Community) state.”
He said the first organization to receive a donation was the Governor Children Fund in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the late 1970s.
“In recent years, we have not had an event to honor the recipient or recipients, nor have we met them,” Hall said.
He said Everybody’s commenced its Person of the Year Award in 1978 on the suggestion of one Helen B. Lucas “to celebrate the magazine’s first anniversary.”
That year, Hall said Janelle Commissiong of Trinidad & Tobago, who, in 1977, became the first woman of color to be crowned Miss Universe, “received the accolades.”
Hall said Commissiong shared the honor with Calypso Rose, “the first woman to shatter the male domination of calypso by winning the 1977 National Calypso King title, thereby forcing the renaming of the prestigious competition to the National Calypso Monarch.”
The Everybody’s publisher said the late St. Lucian Nobel Peace Prize winner and economist Sir Arthur Lewis and his wife attended the magazine’s 1980 dinner in his honor, “celebrating his 1979 Nobel Prize.”
Hall noted that Sir Arthur was the first Black person to win the Nobel prize for economics. Sir Arthur Lewis died on Jun. 15, 1991.
