Malcolm X raised my consciousness about myself and my people and other people more than any person I know. I knew him before he became Malcolm X. Today is the Sunrise day of Lena Horne, the African American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer. You have to be taught to be second class; youre not born that way. Dont be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can, because when you feel nothing, its just death. Lena Calhoun Horne was born June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. In her biography she stated that on the day she was born, her father was in the midst of a card game trying to get money to pay the hospital costs. Her parents divorced while she was still a toddler. Her mother left later in order to find work as an actress and Lena was left in the care of her grandparents. When she was seven her mother returned and the two traveled around the state, which meant that Lena was enrolled in numerous schools (for a time she also attended schools in Florida, Georgia and Ohio). Later she returned to Brooklyn. She quit school when she was 14 and got her first stage job at 16, dancing and later singing at the famed Cotton Club in Harlem. There she was introduced to the growing community of jazz performers, including Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington. She also met Harold Arlen, who would write her biggest hit, “Stormy Weather.” For the next five years she performed in New York nightclubs, on Broadway, and touring with the Charlie Barnet Orchestra. Singing with Barnet’s primarily white swing band, Horne was one of the first Black women to successfully work on both sides of the color line. Within a few years, Horne moved to Hollywood, and by the mid-’40s, Horne was the highest paid Black actor in the country. She was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. However, her civil rights activism and friendship with Paul Robeson, meant that she was whitelisted and unable to perform on television or in the movies. For seven years the attacks on her person and political beliefs continued. During this time, however, Horne worked as a singer, appearing in nightclubs and making some of her best recordings. >>>During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform for segregated audiences or for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen, according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of Black U.S. soldiers and white German POWs. Seeing the black soldiers had been forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where the black troops were seated and performed with the Germans behind her.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 05:58:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015