Lena Horne
Lena Horne c. 1961, Friedman-Abeles, New York, photographer
Birth Name: Lena Mary Calhoun Horne
Date of Birth: June 30, 1917
Place of Birth: Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Date of Death: May 9, 2010
Place of Death: Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S.
Ethnicity: African-American, some English
Lena Horne was an American singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist.
Lena was the daughter of Edna Louise (Scottron) and Edwin Fletcher Horne. Her parents were both black. She also had English ancestry. She is sometimes stated to have had Native American roots. It is not clear if this Native American ancestry has been verified/documented.
Lena was married to musician, composer, conductor, and arranger Lennie Hayton, until his death. She had two children, Edwin and journalist Gail Lumet Buckley, with her former husband, Louis Jordan Jones. She is the grandmother of actress and screenwriter Jenny Lumet, and the great-grandmother of actor and musician Jake Cannavale.
Lena’s paternal grandfather was named Edwin Fletcher Horne, Sr. (the son of Edwin F. Horne and Elizabeth). Lena’s grandfather Edwin was born in Tennessee, New Mexico, or Indiana.
Lena’s paternal grandmother was Cora Catherine Calhoun (the daughter of Moses Calhoun and Atlanta Mary Fernanda/Fernando). Cora was born in Georgia. Moses was the son of Nellie Reynolds. Atlanta was born in Georgia, the daughter of Arkansas Fernanda and Charlotte.
Lena’s maternal grandfather was Cyrus L. Scottron (the son of Samuel Raymond Scottron/Scrotton and Anna Maria Willet). Cyrus was born in Georgia. Samuel was a noted inventor, and was the son of Samuel J. Scottron and Jane M.
Lena’s maternal grandmother was Louise Ashton Logan (the daughter of Joshua Logan and Amelia Louise Ashton). Lena’s grandmother Louise was born in New York.
Sources: http://www.lena-horne.com
http://www.nytimes.com
Genealogies of Lena Horne – http://www.geni.com
http://www.wikitree.com
Lena’s father on the 1910 U.S. Census – https://www.familysearch.org
Lena’s father on the 1920 U.S. Census – https://www.familysearch.org
Put a picture up!
Hey, Lena was a Creole that chose to only acknowledge her African Heritage because she felt it was important for people to know she was Black and to love her as a Black. She sw the struggles and even went through some when she could have easily passed for Hispanic or White because she loved her Black heritage. (Not that sh didn’t love the rest but she felt that the Black part of her needed a strong fighter.)
“Lena Horne’s parents were both very light in color and came from black upper-middle-class families in Brooklyn (Horne and Schickel, 1965; Buckley, 1986). Lena lived with her father’s parents until she was about seven years old. Her grandfather was very light and blue-eyed. Her fair-skinned grandmother was the daughter of a slave woman and her white owner, from the family of John C. Calhoun, well-known defender of slavery. One of her father’s great-grandmothers was a Blackfoot Indian, to whom Lena Horne has attributed her somewhat coppery skin color. One of her mother’s grandmothers was a French-speaking black woman from Senegal and never a slave. Her mother’s father was a “Portuguese Negro,” and two women in his family had passed as white and become entertainers.”
The Seventh Paragraph:
http://condor.depaul.edu/~mwilson/multicult/whois.html
I wonder who the women that pass as white were
RIP Lena
Beautiful Woman!
May You Rest In Peace!