Michelle Obama stresses service at BET honors

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First Lady

Michelle Obama

took a theatre during an awards rite Saturday with producer

Maya Angelou

, performers

Stevie Wonder

and

Mariah Carey

, and other African American celebrities who called a black village to county action, starting with voting in a

2012 presidential election

.

The taping of a BET Honors, hosted by

Black Entertainment Television

was hold during a ancestral Warner Theatre in downtown Washington.

It brought out stars including singers

Patti LaBelle

and black of essence

Aretha Franklin

, as good as Washington domestic total such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The politics-meets-glamour eventuality fits in with a recently ramped adult efforts by Obama to assistance her husband,

President Barack Obama

, win a severe re-election bid in November.

Obama, in a crimson, one-shouldered gown, presented a Literary Arts endowment to Angelou and appealed to a throng to follow Angelou's instance as an activist.

"It is not adequate merely to find mass for ourselves, we contingency assistance others learn mass within themselves. We need to strech down and strech out, and give behind and lift others," she said.

Speakers during a rite praised a Obamas for being a initial black family in a White House and told a assembly to "vote like your life depends on it."

"We have to practice a inherent right to vote. And there's a male out there with a prophesy for this nation and he intends to finish what he started," pronounced Beverly Kearney, conduct manager of a University of Texas' women's lane team.

Those respected were filmmaker Spike Lee, World War Two Tuskegee airmen, as good as Angelou, Kearney, Wonder and Carey.

Obama stayed for a three-hour taping during that several acts had to be finished over. While posing on theatre with a endowment winners an assembly member yelled, "We adore you, First Lady!"

"Just her entrance out and carrying a good time, it comes off like she's only like a rest of us. Since she connects, it's going to be useful to her in assisting Barack get another term," pronounced Sonya Lowery, 41, of Maryland.

(Reporting by Lily Kuo; Editing by Jackie Frank)

(Corrects spelling of Tuskegee)

(news.yahoo.com)