Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917) is an American singer and actress. She has recorded and performed extensively, independently and with other jazz notables, including Artie Shaw, Teddy Wils . .   Expand    Wikipedia

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917) is an American singer and actress. She has recorded and performed extensively, independently and with other jazz notables, including Artie Shaw, Teddy Wilson, Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Charlie Barnet, Benny Carter and Billy Eckstine. She currently lives in New York City and no longer makes public appearances. Lena Horne was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. Both sides of her family are mixture of African American, Native American, and Caucasian descent. Both were part of what W. E. B. Du Bois called "The Talented Tenth," the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated African Americans. She grew up in an upper-middle-class black community. Her father, Edwin "Teddy" Horne, who worked in the gambling trade as a numbers kingpin, left the family when she was three. Her mother, Edna Scottron, was the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with an African-American theater troupe and traveled extensively. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. Her uncle, Frank S. Horne, was an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She is a reported descendant of the John C. Calhoun family. Lena Horne attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn which has since become Boys & Girls High School, on Fulton Street; she dropped out without earning a diploma.

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