Growing up in Barbados in the 1940s, 50’s and well into the sixties the name Lena Horne meant quite a lot.

Invariably, it was mentioned on Rediffusion and the cinema, the main sources of public entertainment back then, with an abundance of excitement and considerable admiration.

Her music, beauty and ability to entertain were like magnetic forces that often held you spellbound. That picture didn’t change much, if at all, over the years and while her appearances on stage or screen became less and less in the last dozen years, audiences couldn’t get enough of her presence and people used different words to describe the elegant and talented lady.

“One of our nation’s most cherished entertainers,” was the way United States President Barack Obama described her a few days ago.

Actually, he used the descriptive phrase in both praise and remembrance to pay a well-deserved public tribute to a global iconic figure who died less than a week ago in New York at the age of 82. But Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, singer, actress, dancer, was much more than an outstanding entertainer whose career on the stage, screen, and recorded music spanned more than 60 years.

As the president himself quite rightly put it, “From the time her grandmother signed her up for an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) membership as a child, she worked tirelessly to further the cause of justice and equality.” In the process she helped to break the back of segregation in a country driven by the question of race. At the same time, she brought joy to the hearts and smiles to the faces of hundreds of millions of people, not simply in the United States but around the world, Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean included.

Realistically, few persons really matched her as an entertainer, an activist for the cause of justice and decency and as a woman of unparalleled beauty, intelligence, talent and force of character. Her refusal to perform before segregated audiences more than half of a century ago and the principled struggle she led during the Second World War and long afterwards cost her dearly in terms of roles in Hollywood, on the Broadway stage and elsewhere, but she never wavered and in the end she earned the tribute of a trailblazer who opened the door to successful careers for Blacks on and off the stage and screen.

Born in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn on June 30, 1917, she was raised mainly by her grandparents Edwin Horne and Cora Calhoun. At 16 years old her mother, Edna Scottron, an actress with a Black theater troupe encouraged her to audition for the dance chorus of the famous Harlem nightclub, the Cotton Club and the rest, as they say, is history.

Her sultry voice, beauty and audience appeal soon led to an appearance on Broadway in “Dance with Your Gods” in 1934. Her next stop was Hollywood where she was given small parts in several movies, which paved the way for more substantial roles in such films as “Cabin in the Sky” and “Stormy Weather.”  By the end of her acting career in 1994, she had appeared in 20 films and about 10 television programs. She recorded more than 30 albums.

When the U.S. entered the Second World War, she performed for American troops in different foreign countries and was very popular with soldiers of all races. It was while she was entertaining the soldiers that she refused to appear before segregated audiences and wouldn’t sing if captured German soldiers were seated ahead of Black Americans. After all, she reasoned, quite sensibly, Germans who were killing Americans at the time shouldn’t be given pride of place ahead of Blacks who were fighting and dying for the U.S.

Unfortunately, a mix of the racist attitudes which guided official policy and relations between Americans, and her defiance of Jim Crow laws prevented the talented star from appearing in many more movies that would have benefited from her skill.  That was our loss. Still, she became the first Black performer to sign a long-term contract with a major studio, MGM, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, making her debut with the studio in “Panama Hattie” in 1942. The next year, the studio lent her to 20th century fox and she performed the title song of “Stormy Weather.” That song became her signature tune and it was played on national television an around the world immediately after the news came that she had died.

The winner of several Grammy awards for her music and a special Tony Award for “Lena Horne, the Lady and her Music,” on Broadway in 1981, she was nominated for a Tony in 1957 for “Jamaica.” Several organizations and institutions, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the New York Drama Critics Circle, Howard university, the NAACP, the Martin Luther King National Historic Site and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers honored Ms. Horne for her extra-ordinary talent, creativity and perseverance as an artist, a civil rights trailblazer and for her overall contribution to life in America.

She has earned the restful sleep into which she has slipped, never to be awakened physically. However, she will remain alive in people’s memories and hearts for decades to come.

Lena Horne, June 30, 1917 –May 9, 2010. Loved and appreciated by all of us at The Broad Street Journal