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Lena Horne, 92, the first African American actress and performer to be contracted with a major studio, died Sunday at the New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, according to the New York Times. The cause of death was not listed.
Lena Horne, 92, the first African American actress and performer to be contracted with a major studio, died Sunday at the New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, according to the New York Times. The cause of death was not listed.
Not only a triple threat of a performer with stellar singing, acting and dancing chops, Horne was also an ardent civil rights activist. She fought for desegregation alongside luminaries Paul Robeson and Medgar Evers and joined First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws, according to Entertainment Weekly.
At the age of 80 Horne looked back at her life and said the following, according to the NY Times:
"My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I'm free. I no longer have to be a 'credit.' I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody. I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else."
Horne is survived by her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley.
