Actress and activist Erika Alexander to speak during annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

Erika Alexander—an actress, trailblazing activist, entrepreneur, creator, producer, and director—will participate in Randolph College’s annual celebration honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The event will be held at 5 p.m. on Monday, January 27, in Smith Hall Theatre. She will engage in a conversation with Chief Diversity Officer Charles E. Gibson III, that will focus on Dr. King’s legacy and her work in the arts and as an activist. 

Alexander starred as attorney Maxine Shaw on the popular 1990s series Living Single, a now-iconic character who powerful women like Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and former Georgia state representative Stacey Abrams have cited as influences. 

There’s even an entire website, The Maxine Shaw Effect, dedicated to the character and how her “intelligence, signature style, and swagger” inspired countless people, with research to back it up. 

“I have been stunned by how many people and the caliber of people who said ‘I went into law’ and ‘I went into communications’ or ‘I went into a leadership position’ because of Maxine Shaw,” Alexander told Harper’s Bazaar last summer. “Do you know how amazing that is? So representation matters. And Maxine Shaw lives.”

Alexander—who has also starred on The Cosby Show and films including Get Out and last year’s Oscar-winning American Fiction—is devoted to making a difference offscreen as well.  

She serves as a board member for One Fair Wage and is involved with social and racial justice organizations including The Poor People’s Campaign, Color of Change, the NAACP, and UNCF, among others. 

Alexander is a co-founder of Color Farm Media, which works to bring greater equity, inclusion, and diverse representation to both media and politics. Founded in 2017, Color Farm focuses on unique intellectual property to develop and produce scripted and non-scripted content featuring multicultural characters and storylines for global audiences. 

In 2023, Alexander spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about creating her own opportunities. 

“I was discovered when I was 14, and I played a foster child in my first film. Next, I played a slave and a prostitute. It didn’t feel like who I was inside, and I thought, ‘Is this what I’m getting now?’” she said. “I talked to my agent, and they told me no one would ever mistake me for an ingenue. That’s when I knew I needed to become a creator. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I wanted to write what was inside of me, not wait for someone to see it in me.” 

Her directorial debut, The Big Payback, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Festival and aired on PBS on MLK Day last year. A documentary, the film chronicles the story of the first reparations bill for African Americans in U.S. history.

She is also creator/writer/producer of Finding Tamika, Audible Original’s 2022 Best True Crime Series and a DuPont Columbia award nominee, and producer of John Lewis: Good Trouble, a three-time Emmy nominee and winner of the NAACP Best Documentary.