CULCHA

Lena Horne (1917-2010)

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Lena Mary Calhoun Horne died on Sunday night at New York-Presbyterian /Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. There was no sun up in the sky. The skies over New York that evening alternated between cloudy and clear; there was no stormy weather to speak of. But rain fell just the same, well disguised as sadness.



She was a singer, an actress and a moral force, as central to the inner life and the conscience of American society as Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King. In a time when African Americans were under siege for their identity, she represented. She stood for something. She didn’t back down. 

She won Tony awards. She won Grammy awards. She won an Emmy and a doctorate from Howard University. She was one of the rare entertainers with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies, the other for recordings. She had two children and a thousand million fans. She was 92 years young. And she forgot more about being a Class Act than any of us will ever know.
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