The Los Angeles Times ran its own story that same day with five other accusers. She was one of four women to speak on the record to the New York Times about a pattern of violent sexual behavior by Simmons. On December 13, 2017, Dixon’s story broke. Every day that goes by I’m silent, Jenny and these other women are twisting in the wind,” Dixon says. Dixon kept thinking that “Jenny is out there, and Jenny is black. It’s one of the factors that helps explain why women of color report sexual assault at rates far below that of white women and a major force behind Dixon’s decision to leave the industry altogether and take her silence with her. “The implications of naming him, an iconic and successful black man, are absolutely loaded for a black woman,” Dixon says, citing the reception Anita Hill and Desiree Washington received from the community after their respective accusations against Clarence Thomas and Mike Tyson. She knew with terrible certainty that Lumet’s story was not unique.ĭixon also appreciated that Lumet’s decision to speak out against Simmons must have been an excruciating one. She had launched her career at Def Jam back in 1994, working as an artists and repertoire (A&R) executive and reporting directly to Simmons. It was a watershed moment for Dixon, bringing to the fore a bundle of memories that she had worked hard to bury. In November, the award-winning screenwriter Jenny Lumet published a first-person account in the Hollywood Reporter of being violated in 1991 by Russell Simmons, the king of hip-hop and cofounder of Def Jam Records. “The fleeting miracle of the movement is that it created a portal that I walked through, thinking I would do this one thing, drop off my luggage, then go back to business as usual.”īut soon the storm of allegations would draw undeniably close. “Also I thought, ‘This has nothing to do with me.’ ” They’re getting the benefit of the doubt. As the parade of high-profile actresses and their accusations grew longer-Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Mira Sorvino-and then a groundswell of voices overtook Twitter to say that they, too, had been sexually harassed or assaulted, Dixon stayed tuned in.
From there, of course, the floodgates opened. In all likelihood she was in her car, listening to the news on October 5, the day the New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story.
She used the time to strategize her startup news radio kept her company. Instead of joining the other parents in a competition for weak Wi-Fi in a crowded waiting room, Dixon camped out in her car. When her daughter, Della, enrolled in a dance class in Harlem that year, Dixon would drive her Jetta wagon with “WOKE” plates and SiriusXM radio up and down the FDR four days a week from Brooklyn. As with all stay-at-home mompreneurs, the work got done in whatever bits of time she could steal from the day. That fall, she was raising money for a tech/beauty startup called EverythingDid, designed to help women and girls of color manage the care of curly and kinky hair. But to appreciate the fullness of it-and especially the thread of music running throughout-you have to page back to an earlier chapter of Dixon’s life, in 2017. She’s just started her own record label, The 9th Floor, and is readying to launch the recording career of its first artist.
A dance of fire and ice cracked tv#
On the other, she is counting out the projects that are currently occupying her time and headspace, all endeavors that she’ll launch from this new home base: There’s a book proposal in the works, a TV script, and a documentary that (fingers crossed) appears destined for release in January. It’s late July, and Dixon sits on the couch with a napping cat affixed to her side and an iced coffee sweating in one hand. The living room, though, is an island of unpacked order, bobbing above a cardboard sea. Drew Dixon (MBA 2004) moved into this Brooklyn Heights apartment just a few days ago, as evidenced by the ratio of boxes emptied to those still filled. By Jen McFarland Flint photographed by Chris Sorensen for Harvard Business School Alumi
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