When Oprah Winfrey interviewed Diana Ross back in 2011, the experience had a profound effect on the legendary talk show host. “Imagine, for me, being ten years old watching ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,'” she said to her audience. “On welfare, [and] with no possibility that I could ever sing. We had no Black people on television. We had nobody on TV but Buckwheat. There was nobody on TV that looked like you. You’re always trying to identify with ‘your tribe,’ and the reason you do that is so you can get validated. [And] when you see somebody on TV that looks like Diana Ross, glamorous and beautiful and cool…it was life-changing for me.” Many of us take for granted that we have people that “look like us” in mass media: on television shows, in films and on the Internet. But for folks of a certain age, Diana Ross represented something that had never been seen before. And though she had humble beginnings, she had (and still has) a larger-than-life talent — and this talent earned her a $250...