Lena Horne
World Music Singer
Twentieth-century African-American singer and actress. She theirly sang "Stormy Weather," won a Grammy Award for a 1981 album entitled Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, and appeared in film versions of The Wiz, Broadway Rhythm, and Ziegfeld Follies.
After dropping out of high school at the age of sixteen, she performed in the chorus of Harlem's famed Cotton Club.
A civil rights activist with leftist political leanings, she was blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era.
She was born in New York City to an affluent family of European, African-American, and Native American heritage. She married Louis Jordan Jones in 1937; the couple had two children.
She appeared with jazz musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in the 1940 musical film Cabin in the Sky.