A Golden Voice is Silent

Lena Horne, the legendary singer and actress, with a voice as sweet as honey and beauty that, like Helen, could sink ships and topple thrones, died Sunday, May 9, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was 92.Horne, whose sultry voice could make anyone love jazz, and whose classic mixed-race beauty could make anyone fall in love with her was, in the 1940s one of the first black singers hired to sing with a major white band. She was the first black to perform at the Copacabana nightclub, and her 'safe' not too black appearance made her one of the few blacks to be signed to a Hollywood contract.Born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood June 30, 1917, her mother, Edna Scottron, was so light-skinned she was admitted to hospital as a white. Her father, Edwin Horne, was a gambler who was not present at the time of birth. He was out gambling to pay for her hospital delivery. Both fraternal and maternal sides of her family had African, European, and Native American roots. She grew up in an upper-middle-class black community in Pittsburgh, raised by her grandparents. Horne was part of what W. E. B. Dubois called "The Talented Tenth." An uncle was advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and her maternal grandmother was an inventor.Horne's mother was an actress with a black theater troupe, and got her a job in the chorus line at Harlem's Cotton Club when she was 16. This experience was the beginning of a life of activism and resentment at America's racial situation, where she could sing for white audiences but could not socialize with them. She was one of the first black actors to be given a Hollywood contract, signing with MGM in 1943. She appeared in such films as Panama Hattie, and sang the title song in Stormy Weather.Though extremely talented, Horne realized that she got where she was because her looks did not threaten whites. Even though her grandmother had enrolled her in the NAACP and Urban League when she was only, she didn't become really active in the civil rights movement until 1945 when she performed for GIs in Germany, and saw German POWs sitting on the front row in the audience while black soldiers were restricted to the back rows.From that day on, she was at the front lines of the fight for equality for people of all races and creeds. At the same time, she continued to wow audiences worldwide with her appearances in movies, on TV, and with her music. There was hardly a great musical artist of America's past that she did not perform with. Greats like Harry Belafonte, Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Some blacks castigated her for taking advantage of her good looks and accused her of "passing for white" to get ahead. Had she not, though, the day when a black performers like Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Halle Berry could receive Oscar awards might still be in our future.Lena Horne was a class act. She sang like an angel, with that smoky kind of jazz voice that evoked images of dimly lit night clubs and bath tub gin, and a beauty that man fall in love, instantly and deeply. She was also a role model for legions of black children, to whom she demonstrated that it is possible to overcome obstacles, surmount stereotypes, and be a success. The golden voice is dead, but the golden memories will live forever.References:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100510/ap_on_en_mu/us_obit_horne_11http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Hornehttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395043