Happy Birthday to American soprano Leontyne Price, born in Laurel, Mississippi, #OnThisDay in 1927. Price was the first African American singer to perform a leading role in an opera at the Metropolitan Opera in 1961, as Leonora in Il Trovatore.
Price won more than 20 Grammys and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), a Kennedy Center Honor (1980), and the National Medal of the Arts (1985).