  lena mary calhoun horne (june 30, 1917 â may 9, 2010) was an american singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. horne joined the chorus of the cotton club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films cabin in the sky and stormy weather. due to the red scare and her left-leaning political views, horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in hollywood. returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, horne took part in the march on washington in august 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. she announced her retirement in march 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, lena horne: the lady and her music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. she continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. ==early life== lena horne was born in bedfordâstuyvesant, brooklyn. reportedly descended from the john c. calhoun family, both sides of her family were a mixture of european american, native american, and african-american descent, and belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated people.{{cite web|url=http://www.answers.com/topic/lena-horne|title=artist: lena horne biography|author=william ruhlmann|accessdate=2008-08
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