Toni Vaz, the actress who founded the NAACP Image awards has passed away at the age of 101.
Vaz was a stuntwoman and extra working in Hollywood when the NAACP’s Beverly Hills Hollywood Branch was established in 1962 to address racism and discrimination in the entertainment industry. She joined the branch early on.
“They were portraying us as Aunt Jemimas and Stepin Fetchits, and that bothered me,” Vaz said. “We needed to advocate for better treatment and the best way to do that was through the NAACP.”
During a branch meeting in Beverly Hills in April 1967, it was announced that the unit needed to raise funds, and Vaz and other attendees were asked to come up with fundraising ideas. When they met again to discuss their suggestions for fundraisers, Vaz pitched the concept of an awards show.
“I called it the Image Awards because I wanted a better image for the people who worked in the industry,” Vaz said. “I wanted to put this award show together to thank the producers for giving good roles to people of color.”
The branch president liked the idea, Vaz said, but when she made follow-up calls to members and friends to enlist volunteers for an awards show committee, no one volunteered.
However, as the old showbiz saying goes, the show must go on.
Vaz reached out to Black A-listers such as Sammy Davis, Jr., who hosted the first meeting of the NAACP Beverly Hills Hollywood Branch in his home; Sidney Poitier, whom she had worked with on the movie Porgy and Bess; and the late Ivan Dixon, an actor, director and producer of Hogan’s Heroes at the time.
Vaz also wrote letters to secure sponsors for the event and booked the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the first NAACP Image Awards show was held on August 13, 1967.
“I created the Image Awards,” Vaz said flatly. “No committee was involved in my creating the Image Awards. None whatsoever.”
Throughout her career, Vaz pushed for equal opportunities for people of color in movies and television. She is proud of the progress African Americans have made in Hollywood.
“I was very lucky,” said Vaz. “Minorities didn’t have big roles then. But now, you can be anything you want to be. You have more minorities working in acting than when I began.”
