Horne also is noteworthy for her contributions to the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson, a singer who also combated American racial discrimination. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or to groups in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen" [5], according to her Kennedy Center biography. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed in behalf of the NAACP, SNCC and the National Council for Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws. [6]
They leave out a lot. But they do have a good photo by Carl Van Vechten.
They can't get her family correct. (Two relatives of Lena Horne's maternal grandfather would pass for White, one an actress, the other a singer.) They can't get the pressure on her correct either. (Early on, while trying to establish herself in the New York theater, she was advised to pass for Latino by agent Harold Gumm and producer George White -- Horne refused).
Most significantly, they leave out Horne's signing with MGM. Horne didn't want to make movies and was quite happy in New York City. So happy she was turning down an offer from the Trocadero in Los Angeles when the NAACP's Walter White explained to her that not only could this lead to a break in films for Horne, it could lead to a huge advanced for African-Americans. She took the town when she opened at the Trocadero. After MGM offered a contract, Horne went to speak with Walter White. They discussed the roles African-Americans were relegated to -- servants and native caricatures. It was for this reason that Horne refused to play demeaning roles and had that written into her contract. In her autobiography, Lena, Horne explained of the roles offered to African-Americans at the time, "They were mainly extras and it was not difficult to strip down to a loincloth and run around Tarzan's jungle or put on a bandanna and play one of the slaves in Gone with the Wind."
Crapapedia leaves out that and they also tell you that Lena Horne never starred in a film while under contract to MGM. Apparently they missed Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather (the first was for MGM, the second was made by Fox with MGM loaning Horne out for the film).
During one section of the conversation Dona nodded to Ava who jotted this down.
C.I.: Betty rightly likes to bring up Katha Pollitt's nonsense dismissal of the NAACP speaking out against the lack of TV portrayals of people of color. That's Katha showing not only her xenophobia and snobbery -- yes, Katha is a snob; no, no one knows why -- she's also flaunting her historical ignorance. Cabin in the Sky was made, and all the studios tried to turn or churn out one all African-American film during that period, because FDR's administration was asking them too. 1945, FDR dies and Harry Truman's not interested so the studios feel they 'did their part' and the flurry of FDR-requested African-American films are over. As a result unemployment rates skyrocketed for African-American performers which led the NAACP and others to pressure and led to a motion, introduced by Betsy Blair -- not yet blacklisted and married to Gene Kelly -- to introduce a motion in the Screen Actors Guild calling on the Guild to fight back against discrimination. Though the motion made no real difference in the immediate time, it did pass unanimously. But what did happen was a push back of stubbornness on the part of the studios. And that's either followed with a push-back from advocates or with a backlash. Bringing that up to the present, so for Katha to write that bad column where she felt it was her 'duty' to tell the NAACP what to focus on, and to include that bad column in her bad Virginity or Death was not just insulting, it was historically ignorant and racist. Racist even if she was completely ignorant because it's really not her business to decide what issues an organization should focus on and I've never seen her call out the ACLU or any other organization. Only the NAACP, which is an African-American organization, was she comfortable bossing around. Strikes me as racist. Historically ignorant because instead of attacking the ACLU, she should have been applauding it and standing with it to call out the absence of African-Americans from TV. By refusing to join the call and slamming the NAACP, she was siding with the forces that opposed Lena Horne and that traditionally held African-Americans back. That she did so from the pages of The Nation is very telling. And Betty has rightly focused on the issue of the message it sends to the youth. She's a mother of three and she's very aware that her children rarely see characters of their race onscreen. That hurts them, that hurts all children. Equally true is that there are many people who, like Lena Horne at MGM, are repeatedly held back, repeatedly prevented from a chance to utilize their gifts and talents. Katha regularly re-writes her whine about the small number of women writing columns for The New York Times -- while ignoring her own magazine's miserable record. Maybe she just thinks bad columnists need opportunities? But someone needs to ask her why she wants equality in a bad newspaper but thinks it's 'wasteful' for African-Americans to object to being excluded from roles?
We did not know about FDR's request or the studios rushing to execute it. We also didn't know, as C.I. would continue to explain, that Lena Horne was dubbed "the female Paul Robeson" because she was very active politically -- with the NAACP and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences, and Professions. That she was blacklisted for her politics and not just from film, but blacklisted from TV and radio (Ed Sullivan helped get her off the blacklist). She protested the KKK, advocated for the rights of Japanese-Americans and much more. She was highly active politically, especially for that time period.
C.I.: And The Nation pops back into Lena Horne's life before the blacklist. She refused to do an MGM-backed Broadway play because it was flat-out racist. As a result, MGM started screwing her over by refusing to let her do night club work. [Joan] Crawford advised her to get a bigger agency and she went with MCA. They did the bare minimum. That's in terms of getting 'permission' for her to work in nightclubs and in terms of 'representing' her. They were more than happy to take her money. But MCA was a highly racist agency and Lena would find, in town after town, that while a White star or White personality far less famous than her, raising far less money than she did, would be greeted immediately by MCA, receive congratulatory telegrams on opening night, MCA would mosey on over to see her when they damn well felt like it, maybe three, maybe five days after she opened. The telegram would arrive on the second or third night. They were racists, they were damn racists. Even for the time. They were also cowards. And of course Jules Stein ran MCA. That would be Katrina vanden Heuvel's racist grandfather -- the only person in the family who ever made money, the money she still lives off of. And that money, like her little Harlem mansion, comes at the expense of African-Americans. That family made their money off modern slavery and racism.
So remember that each time you buy a copy of The Nation, you reward a family with a long legacy of racism. A family that built its money treating African-Americans like second-class people (at best) while gladly taking commissions off their work -- work that they didn't even get the performers. Performers whose career they were happy to profit from but refused to build.
Lena Horne's Civil Rights work including raising the profile of African-Americans in film and in clubs, ending segregation in New York City clubs as well as clubs outside of NYC. It includes joining James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Jerome Smith, Rip Torn, Dr. Kenneth Clark, Lorraine Hansberry and Dr. Brewton Berry for a meeting with then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss the segregation and violence in Birmingham (the violence included police sicking dogs on the marchers and fire fighters turning the hoses on the marchers on May 3rd, which followed the April arrest of MLK and other assaults on peaceful protests). Her activism found her traveling to Jackson, Mississippi to speak and sing at an NAACP rally -- which is where she met Medgar Evers for the first time. Horne was booked on NBC's Today Show June 13, 1963 to talk about the Civil Rights movement and learn, shortly after arriving at the studio, that Medgar Evers had been assassinated the night before. Horne would manage to compose herself and go on live TV to discuss Evers life and legacy. She participated in the August 28, 1963 March on Washington. She would do a Carnegie Hall benefit for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
At that performance she would debut two new songs. "Silent Spring" was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg about the September 15, 1963 Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in which four young girls -- Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Diane Wesley, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Addie Mae Collins -- were murdered. The second song was "Now!" which is a Civil Rights anthem and was a hit song. Like "Kumbaya" its role in the Civil Rights movement seems to be forgotten by many today. The bulk of us had never heard of it when C.I. was singing it and still didn't recognize it when C.I. put on Lena Horne's recording. (Crapapedia is, not surprisingly, unaware of "Now!") Betty insisted on calling her father and though he didn't recognize "Now!," when she sang the first lines of the song, he immediately recognized it.
In an effort to reclaim and pass on history, below are the lyrics Adolph Green and Betty Comden wrote for Lena Horne's anthem:
If those historical gentlemen came back today --
Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln --
And Walter Cronkite put them on channel 2
To find out what they were thinking,
I'm sure they'd say,
"Thanks for quoting us so much
but we don't want to take a bow,
enough with the quoting put those words into action
and we mean action
Now!"
Now is the moment,
Now is the moment ,
Come on,
We've put it off long enough.
Now!
No more waiting,
No hesitating,
Now!
Now !
Come on
Let's get some of that stuff!
It's there for you and me.
For every he and she.
Just want to do what's right
Constitutionally.
I went and took a look
In my old history book.
It's there in black and white
For all to see.
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Everyone should love his brother.
People all should love each other.
Just don't take it literal, mister,
No one wants to grab your sister
Now is the time!
Now is the time!
Now is the moment,
Now is the moment,
Come on,
We put it off long enough.
Now no more waiting,
No hesitating
Now!
Now!
Come on,
Lets get some of that stuff.
It's there for you and me
For every he and she
Just want to do what's right
Constitutionally.
I went and took a look
In my old history book.
It's there in black and white
For all to see.
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
The message of this song's not subtle.
No discussion.
No rebuttal.
We want more
Than just a promise.
Say goodbye
To Uncle Thomas.
Call me naive,
Still I believe
We're created free and equal now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Now!
Everyone should love his brother.
People all should love each other.
Since they say we all got rhythm,
Come on, let's share rhythm with them.
Now is the time!
Now is the time!
The time is now!