Today in Black History: Ruth E. Carter
Award-winning Costume Designer
Issue #1052 Today In Black History Wednesday, July 22, 2026
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I have seen some awesome movies over the decades, but seeing “Black Panther” was life-changing for me. I think my favorite costumes were the ones for Queen Ramonda. Those headpieces!
Ruth E. Carter has spent more than three decades making sure Black stories look as rich on screen as they feel in real life. As a costume designer, she has clothed some of the most iconic moments in American film — and in doing so, rewrote the rules for what her profession could achieve.
Early Life and Education
Carter was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children. She studied theater at Hampton University, a historically Black institution in Virginia, where she first developed her eye for how clothing communicates character, history, and status. After college, she moved into regional theater costuming before landing in Hollywood, where she began working with the Black Filmmaker Foundation — a launching pad that would connect her to a young director named Spike Lee.
Building a Career, Frame by Frame
That partnership with Lee became one of the defining collaborations in modern cinema. Carter designed costumes for School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X, a working relationship that spanned more than two decades. Her costumes for Do the Right Thing captured the specific texture of 1980s Brooklyn streetwear, while her work on Malcolm X required painstaking historical research to trace the evolution of a man’s identity — from zoot suits to the disciplined tailoring of his later years.
Carter’s range only grew from there. She dressed Amistad, What’s Love Got to Do with It, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Selma, and Dolemite Is My Name, moving fluidly between eras, continents, and genres. Whether she was recreating the antebellum South, the Civil Rights Movement, or 1970s Blaxploitation cinema, her work consistently did more than decorate — it told the story underneath the story.
Wakanda and a Place in History
In 2018, Carter’s design work reached a new scale entirely with Marvel’s Black Panther. Tasked with building the visual identity of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, she fused real traditions from Maasai, Basotho, Tuareg, Zulu, and Himba cultures with Afrofuturist imagination, creating a wardrobe that felt both ancient and entirely new. The film earned her the Academy Award for Best Costume Design — making her the first African American to win in that category in Oscar history.
Four years later, she won again for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, becoming the first African American woman to win two Academy Awards in any category. She has since been nominated a fifth time, for Sinners, making her the most Oscar-nominated Black woman in the Academy’s history — a streak that includes earlier nominations for Malcolm X and Amistad.
Recognition and Legacy
Carter’s honors extend well beyond the Oscars. In 2021, she became only the second costume designer ever to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Costume Designers Guild recognized her with its Career Achievement Award in 2019, and she has been celebrated by institutions from the Coolidge Corner Theatre to museums that have exhibited her original designs as works of art in their own right.
Why She Matters
Ruth E. Carter’s influence runs deeper than any single film. For decades, costume design was treated as a supporting craft, rarely credited with shaping how audiences understand history, power, and culture. Carter proved otherwise. Her research-driven, culturally grounded approach elevated Black costume design to an art form recognized at the highest levels of the industry — and opened doors for a new generation of designers to tell Black stories with the same rigor and respect she brought to Wakanda, to Harlem, and to Malcolm X’s Harlem streets alike.
Today In Black History
In 1848, Lester Walton was appointed minister to Liberia.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln read the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet.
In 1933, Caterina Jarboro became the first Black person to perform with an American opera company, singing “Aida” at the New York Hippodrome.
In 1939, Jane Matilda Bolin was appointed judge of the court of domestic relations in New York City by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, becoming the first Black woman judge.
In 1979, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to restore citizenship to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
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