“Rampersad compared Horne with [Jackie] Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers great, in that she was given ‘a kind of role of leadership within the black world’ that was to some extent bestowed on her by white American society. Horne herself acknowledged as much, once commenting that she was ‘a kind of black that white people could accept.'”
Reed Johnson looks at the racial trials of Lena Horne, who died Sunday at age 92.
(Also, The LA Times has a handsome photo gallery.)