The 42nd annual NAACP Image Awards honored achievements in movies, TV, music and literature, as well as the accomplishments of special award recipients General Colin Powell and Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin. Tyler Perry was a multiple winner, taking Outstanding Motion Picture and Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture for For Colored Girls and Outstanding Comedy Series for Tyler Perry’s House of Pain.

“Without the NAACP I wouldn’t have dared to dream so big,” said Halle Berry after winning the Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture award for Frankie & Alice, the passion project about a woman with multiple personality disorder that she produced. While she was disappointed by the lack of non-whites among this year’s Oscar nominations, she remains optimistic and vowed to “produce more projects for people of color," she says. "It feels good that I have that kind of power, and I hope that I can keep putting people in roles where they can get recognized and succeed and excel and grow. It’s going to be my life’s work from now on.”

Berry said that she wants to set an example for her daughter, Nahla: “I hope she’s proud of me. I hope that she will appreciate that I dared to be myself and did what I believed in. I hope that those are qualities that I’ll pass on to her." She also called motherhood a “joy…the best work I do.”

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series winner Vanessa Williams acknowledged the support of the Black community, “through my trials and tribulations and ups and downs. It’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate being a trailblazer and making a difference and being a survivor,” she said, thrilled to be part of Desperate Housewives, still going strong in its seventh season. “It’s great to be a Black woman on Wisteria Lane who’s got money, clout, who’s stirring it up, is fabulous and wears great clothes.”

Rapper turned NCIS: Los Angeles star LL Cool J was honored with an award for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series. “This represents the transition and the people who have supported the transition,” he said, declaring that he would put his award on his nightstand. “It has to be somewhere where I’m going to see it a lot.”

Regina King planned to put her Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for Southland on a shelf next to the one she received in 2005 for Ray. “Now I have a set,” she said.

Double winner Shonda Rhimes, honored for Outstanding Drama Series Grey’s Anatomy and writing Private Practice, adds the pair to her trio of Image Awards for writing Grey’s. “Having a show with a multicultural cast shouldn’t be a rarity, but I’m always proud to be honored by the NAACP.”

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