Lena
Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010)
was an American singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne’s career spanned more than seventy
years and covered film, television and theatre.
Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub
performer before moving on to Hollywood and Broadway. A groundbreaking African-Americanperformer, Horne advocated for civil rights and took part
in the March
on Washington in August 1963. Later she
returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on
television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her
retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena
Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which
ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in
the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and
performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was
an American professional baseball player who became the first
African-American to play in Major
League Baseball (MLB)
in the modern era. Robinson broke the color
line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. The Dodgers signing
Robinson heralded the end of racial
segregation in
professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro
leagues since the 1880s.
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. (July 10, 1943 – February 6, 1993) was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980.
