Lena Horne

This beautiful woman died at age 92. From Democracy Now! I took the following:

"Lena Horne enjoyed a six-decade singing career on stage, television and in film. She was the first black woman to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio. She helped break racial boundaries by acting alongside white entertainers, but she was segregated on screen so producers could clip out her singing when the movies ran in the South. In the 1950s, she was blacklisted in part because of her friendship with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1963, Lena Horne took part in the March on Washington alongside Harry Belafonte and Dick Gregory and was part of a group, which included authors James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, that met with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to urge a more active approach to desegregation. We air a rare 1966 interview with Lena Horne from the Pacifica Radio Archives and speak to her biographer, James Gavin. [includes rush transcript]"