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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2016
Born: June 30, 1917, Brooklyn, NY
Education: Attended high school
Died: May 9, 2010, New York City
Touted for her beauty and talent, Horne performed on Broadway, in Hollywood and television films, and was a leading black performer.
She persevered. Raised by her paternal grandmother, a civil rights activist, she instilled values of freedom and race pride. Leaving school at sixteen because of financial hardship, Horne secured a job dancing and singing at Harlem's Cotton Club. Gifted with a “sultry voice,” she soon starred “as a popular singer of the blues.” She also linked art and politics by joining the struggle for civil rights. Her long-term contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1942), the first between a black actor and major studio, stipulated that she would not perform in servile roles. Resisting racial stereotypes, she helped change blacks’ roles. Publicly supporting antiracist campaigns of the NAACP and actor Paul Robeson, she entered a “controversial interracial marriage” in 1947 and was “blacklisted for several years” by movie studios. Still, she performed at nightclubs, recorded songs, and performed in musicals. A supporter of the March on Washington (1963), Horne received the NAACP Spingarn Award (1983) and Image Award (1984), Kennedy Center Award for Lifetime Achievement in Arts (1984), and Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement (1989).
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