Lena Horne

Before she died Sunday, the only things I knew about Lena Horne was that she was ridiculously beautiful (someone teach Alicia Keys how to act so she can play her in the bio-pic) and had once been on The Cosby Show, thus invoking my "anyone who the Cos likes is cool with me" rule. Today I don't really know much more, but this Eugene Robinson article seems like a nice first step:

She wasn't a great singer like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan. Hattie McDaniel and Dorothy Dandridge were better actors. But Lena Horne was a much more important figure in American social history, because she was able to bridge the gap between black and white in a way that others could not. She could be vocal, even strident in her advocacy for civil rights; she could be a proud black woman who stood up for African American causes and refused to back down. But she could do all of this without ever seeming alienated.