A DAUGHTER'S DEDICATION

Nicole Avant's Los Angeles villa honours her parents

- ADDIE MORFOOT

Growing up in Beverly Hills, California, with a father who was a music industry legend and a mother who was a philanthropist and consummate dinner party host, Nicole Avant had a front-row seat at a 12-seater antique wood table - to history.

Muhammad Ali, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Withers, Sidney Poitier, Hank Aaron and Don Cornelius were regular guests who were always offered her mother's signature drink, kir royale.

But what Avant, 56, remembers most about her childhood home is passing the history on what her family called "the Great Wall", which served as a space to honour black entrepreneurs, lawyers, scientists and professors at historically black colleges and universities.

"George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, everybody was part of the wall," Avant said.

"My mother wasn't waiting for me to go to school in the hopes that the school would honour black history. Black history was taught at home. Every day before I walked out into the world, my mother wanted me to know the shoulders I stood on."

Atop those shoulders, Avant served as US ambassador to the Bahamas under President Barack Obama, and she is a film producer whose recent project, The Six Triple Eight, picked up an Oscar nomination for best original song. The film won the NAACP Image Award for Most Outstanding Motion Picture in February.