Lena Horne, the granddaughter of Cora Calhoun Horne, a prominent activist with W.E.B. Du Bois in the Niagara Movement that gave rise to the NAACP,was active in the NAACP virtually from birth. At the age of two, in 1919, she appeared on the cover of the NAACP’s monthly journal, The Crisis, which was edited by Du Bois.
Already a movie star in 1943, the young Horne was dispatched to entertain troops for the USO. While entertaining troops at Fort Reilly, Kansas during World War II, Horne filed a complaint with the NAACP because African American soldiers in the audience had to sit in back seats behind German POWs.
Horne financed her own travel to entertain black troops when MGM Studios pulled her off its tour. In the late 1940s, Horne sued a number of restaurants and theaters for race discrimination and also became politically allied with Paul Robeson in the liberal organization Progressive Citizens of America.
She joined Eleanor Roosevelt’s unsuccessful campaign for anti-lynching legislation and worked on behalf of Japanese Americans who faced discrimination. During the anti-communist hearings in the U.S. Congress in the 1950s, Horne was among hundreds of entertainers blacklisted because of political views and social activism.
Lena Horne performed in some of the most prestigious concert halls around the world. Her fame, however, did not prevent her from being confronted with racism in the U.S. When she overheard a white man call her a racist epithet in a Los Angeles nightclub, she injured him by throwing an ashtray, a table lamp and drinking glasses at him. Many Black people applauded her response.
In the spring of 1963, before the March on Washington, Horne traveled the south with Medgar Evers and other civil rights campaigners. Indeed, she sang at a rally where Evers spoke in Jackson, Mississippi, just days before Evers was assassinated.
Following the killing of Medgar Evers, Horne joined Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, at a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy where the leading artists and authors pressured the Kennedy administration to become more active in fighting to stop violence in the south and to end segregation.
In 1963, Lena Horne participated in the historic March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King. After appearing at the March, Horne used her singing talents to raise money for the civil rights movement and other causes.
She did benefit concerts for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) at the City Auditorium in Atlanta and for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) workers in the South at Carnegie Hall, arranged by the Gandhi Society for Human Rights. Horne was awarded the NAACP’s coveted Spingarn Medal.