Beautiful singer and actress Lena Horne, who 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, died last night at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92. At the age of 80, after decades of facing prejudice and racism in the business, Horne said: “My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.” (Full story: New York Times)
