Enchanting jazz singer and actress Lena Horne died Sunday at was 92. Lena reviled the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them, slowing her rise to Broadway superstardom. “I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept,” she once said. “I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.” Born in Brooklyn in 1917, Lena broke into show business singing in the Cotton Club as a chorus girl — and was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer.
Here’s Lena Horne performing Stormy Weather: