*iz sad*

Lena Horne died today at the ripe old age of 92. The first black performer with a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio (back when Hollywood Studios owned performers and treated them like trading cards), she fought for civil rights, for equal representations, and legal protection from violence and discrimination.

She refused to perform for USO shows where German POWs were seated before African American servicemen. She helped Eleanor Roosevelt draft anti-lynching laws. She supported discriminated against Japanese citizens during and after WW2, and was blacklisted for refusing to shut her mouth in the McCarthy era and sit quietly while the world moved around her.

While my first exposure to Lena was in The Wiz, where she played the Absolutely Fabulous Glinda the Good Witch (who hung out in Space with a lot of shiny babies), my personal favorite Lena scene comes from Sesame Street. She and Kermit sang about how is wasn't easy being green, but how they wouldn't want to be any other way.



You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.
~Lena Horne