Quote

You have to be taught to be second class you're not born that way. But the slanting process is so subtle that you frequently don't realize how you're being slanted until very late in the game.

Lena Horne

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Lena Horne
Age: 92 †
Born: 1917
Born: June 30
Died: 2010
Died: May 9
Actor
Dancer
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pin-Up Girl
Recording Artist
Singer
Stage Actor
Television Actor
New York City
New York
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne
Way
Second
Game
Realizing
Slanting
Taught
Slanted
Class
Frequently
Games
Subtle
Born
Late
Process
Realize

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You wouldn't be allowed to get on a particular bus, but you'd be asked to sign your autograph.
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Malcolm X raised my consciousness about myself and my people and other people more than any person I know. I knew him before he became Malcolm X.
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I remember the day tDr. King died. I wasn't angry at the beginning. It was like something very personal in my life had been touched and finished.
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I'm still learning, you know. At 80, I feel there is a lot I don't know.
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My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
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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.
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After I got over the terrible pain of having something of mine taken from me, I began to think how bad everybody else must be feeling. It wasn't a nice time.
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Malcolm X made me very strong at a time I needed to understand what I was angry about. He had peace in his heart. He exerted a big influence on me.
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I made a promise to myself to be kinder to other people.
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I want to sing like Aretha Franklin. Before her I wanted the technical ability of Ella Fitzgerald.
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The naked female body is treated so weirdly in society. It's like people are constantly begging to see it, but once they do, someone's a hoe.
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music became my refuge and then my salvation.
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Nobody black or white who really believes in democracy can stand aside now everybody's got to stand up and be counted.
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A little nepotism never hurt nobody, honey. If you got it, use it. Press on with it. Remind them of it.
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I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
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50 years old is like springtime to me.
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It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. Carry it by the comfortable handles of gratitude for what's positive and that it is not worse, rather than the uncomfortable edges of bitterness for the negatives and that it is not better.
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In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I'm black and a woman, singing my own way.
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Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
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I'm me, and I'm like nobody else.
Lena Horne