Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Lena Horne, and Cab Calloway, co-stars of “Stormy Weather,” the 1943 20th Century Fox musical.
As I join others in commemorating the centennial of the birth of Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (1917-2010), I am reminded of the struggles and triumphs of African American musical artists–in both their public careers and private lives.
This week, I invited the students in my “Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance” course at Montgomery College to watch the video of Horne performing one of her signature works, “Stormy Weather,” (available on Youtube) in the World War II Era classic movie of the same name. By the time of the film’s release in 1943, 
Horne, who had joined the chorus line at Harlem’s Cotton Club in 1933, was a seasoned professional.
When she was not performing, her social consciousness and political activism led to her participation in the 1963 March on Washington and Civil Rights activities with pianist Billy Strayhorn and other African American artists. While her activism had a negative impact on her film career beginning in the Cold War Era, she enjoyed a decades-long career as a vocalist and recording artist.
For an engaging look at the extraordinary life of Lena Horne, please see The Hornes, An American Family (Knopf, 1986), by Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley.
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
About Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director
Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of The RASHAD Center, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit educational corporation.
Williams holds a PhD in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A native Clevelander and a four-time alumna of Cleveland State University, information on RASHAD's “Praying Grounds, African American Faith Communities: A Documentary and Oral History” project is now available online at www.ClevelandMemory.org/pray/, a site that is maintained by CSU's Library Special Collections, home of the Praying Grounds manuscript collections. Praying Grounds was the primary inspiration for the launching of the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD) at CSU, and links to RASHAD's scholarly journal and newsletter are also available on the Praying Grounds site. On April 28, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
In 2010, Dr. Williams was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, where she taught history and directed a RASHAD-related oral history project that focused on the role of religion in recent Nigerian social history. Other research-related travels have taken her to Canada, China, France, South Africa, and Austria.
In 2013, she conceived and produced “Come Sunday @ 70: The Place of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Jazz in World History and Culture, c. 1943-2013,” a project that included scholarly presentations and performing arts activities. From September 1993 until May 2015, she was a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. She served as a Fulbright Specialist at South Africa's University of the Free State in the summer of 2019, and completed a short-term faculty residency at Howard University in the fall of 2019. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
As a public scholar, her current research projects focus on African American history and culture, especially as it relates to music, religion, and spirituality. She is a member of the Oral History Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Horne, who had joined the chorus line at Harlem’s Cotton Club in 1933, was a seasoned professional.
The RASHAD Center, Inc. 