How It Feels To Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement

Seeking to emphasize the importance of popular entertainment to the narrative of the civil rights movement, Feldstein (history, Rutgers Univ.; Motherhood in Black and White) considers the impact that a group of black female entertainers brought to the campaign. With analysis grounded in the legacy of Lena Horne as the first crossover black female entertainer in American popular culture, Feldstein argues that Horne's move into civil rights activism in 1963 provides the turning point for five other prominent black female entertainers—Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, and Cicely Tyson—to engage that legacy and use it to form their own identities as political performers. Close analysis of the women's performances highlight the ways in which the intersection of race and gender was at the core of their activism and the reception of their message to a public that by turns embraced and shunned them.