If she could not be back on Chauncey Street with Cora, Uncle Frank was the next best thing. As far as Lena was concerned Fort Valley was about two schools—one a blessing, the other a curse. The school where Lena lived, where Uncle Frank ruled, was heaven; but the one-room schoolhouse across the road for ages six to twelve was hell. By 1927 there were nearly two thousand Rosenwald Fund schools in the South, continuing the work of the nineteenth-century Missionaries. As usual, Lena was the teacher’s pet—but the hatred of the other children seemed more virulent than ever. It was not whites who were the racial tormentors (Lena never interacted with Southern whites); it was little black children of all ages in rural Georgia. Everything about Lena was wrong: color, accent, hair, clothes (courtesy of Teddy’s largesse), and life experience. It was in Fort Valley that Lena had her first Florence Mills moment. The teacher had arrived in a somber mood because Florence Mills had died. She asked if any of the children had heard of her—and Lena was the only one to raise her hand. Invited to the front of the room to speak about Mills, Lena proceeded to the blackboard and, not saying a word, executed a perfect split—one of Flo Mills’ famous dance moves. On the other hand, her life at Uncle Frank’s college was so wonderful that it almost made suffering at the hands of classmates worth it. Lena was finally a happy child. For the first time since she went south three years earlier, she felt safe at night with no need to worry about the next beating or bite of food. She was with her family. She had been neglected and endangered until Uncle Frank dropped into her life and rescued her. It was just like A Little Princess, her favorite Frances Hodgson Burnett book.
Lena was the pet of the girls’ dorm, where she lived next door to Frank’s fiancée, the glamorous Frankye Bunn of Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Frankye was an English teacher—fun, kind, and beautiful. To Lena, she was also the essence of “flapper.” She had the perfect boyish flapper figure, the perfect flapper slouch, and the perfect flapper gestures with her cigarette. Lena adored dorm life. She did not have to speak—she merely listened and looked, making herself small in a corner. Imagine the amazed delight of a ten-year-old girl permitted to look as an intimate into the minds of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old young women.
Easter 1928 saw a wonderful and rare Fort Valley Horne family reunion. Teddy Horne had been in a bad car accident and came to stay with Frank to recuperate. As dean and acting president of the college, Frank lived in a substantial brick-and-stone house. Ted had stunned the locals when he arrived in Fort Valley in a great big Cadillac or Packard with a driver-bodyguard. Edwin also traveled south for the first time in years, arriving in Fort Valley with two Brooklyn boyhood friends of Ted and Frank’s to join Ted and Lena and Frank and Frankye. Only Cora and Burke were missing. Lena was in seventh heaven. It was probably the happiest moment of her young life. There were all of her favorite people: her beloved grandfather, her irresistible father, and her knight-in-shining-armor uncle. There is a picture of Lena, grinning from ear to ear, bursting with happiness in Fort Valley, at the idea of a family and people who did not ever wish to hurt her.
What can you say about Ted Horne? Men called him “Ted.” Women, including his mother, called him “Teddy.” He was everything that his mother hated: he worshipped money; he was a gambler, a rake, best friends with the demimonde, and on speaking terms with every major gangster, black or white, especially Owney Madden, Legs Diamond, and whoever fixed the Black Sox baseball scandal. Ted’s best friend was Bub Hewlett, a former middle-class college man and World War I army officer, now the black numbers king of Harlem. Cora would have been sick at the idea of his friends and his women. It was not just that she was extremely puritanical; she was really sickened by the waste of it all. Where did the education go? Where was the uplift? In principle, Ted Horne had received a good Catholic education. In reality, the devil, in the form of the old Plaza hotel, began competing early with that education. It was not about immorality—it was about the root of all evil. Teddy fell in love with money—real money, such as no black man in America could ever hope to pursue by legitimate means. Then, in 1918, he looked up Bub Hewlett and somehow got hooked into the Black Sox scandal. So he was able to leave Edna, with her tantrums and fantasies, for good; to leave Cora money for Lena; and to get to Seattle to meet the widow Irene, matronly even in 1921 as she posed next to the slim 1920s sheikh. Then as now, gangsters were dapper dressers—and black gangsters were probably the most dapper of all.
When he came back into Lena’s life at Fort Valley, Ted neither mentioned nor explained the ten years in which they had basically missed each other’s company. Ted behaved as if he had been gone a week and started drilling her about math, at which, having been taught to gamble as a tot, he was naturally very good. Since Lena was terrible at math these sessions were agony. Sometimes Frank or Frankye had to tell him to let it be. Cora had ruled with an iron tongue, but she never struck any of her sons, and Lena knew that Teddy would never brutalize her the way her mother did. So she minded less and less that the Southern children bullied her mercilessly. She also went hatless in the sun so she would get darker, and she exaggerated her Southern accent. She would have to shed both habits when she finally went back to Cora in 1929.
CHAPTER EIGHT
North and South/1930s
LENA AND FRANK
THE 1930S were transitional years for America—overnight, it went from the mindless 1920s to the catastrophic 1930s. The 1930s were only partly redeemed by the New Deal, which, while feeding the starving millions, specifically denied Social Security benefits to farm laborers and domestic workers—representing at least three-quarters of all the black, brown, red, and yellow people in America. Moreover, government relief allotments were distributed by the states, and this meant that Negroes in the South were denied their fair share. Georgia was among the states where blacks automatically received less relief money than whites. Negro illiteracy was 16.3 percent—and 93.6 percent of that figure lived in the South. The average Southern school district in 1930 spent $44.31 per white child and $12.57 per black child. The racists were not all in the South. Approximately twenty-two major unions officially discriminated against Negroes; that is why blacks did not trust the labor movement, or socialism in general.
The Great Depression and the New Deal brought politics into urban, educated black American life. FDR had a “Brain Trust,” a term coined by New York Times reporter James Kieran for the academics from Columbia University whom Roosevelt, a former governor of New York, induced to work for the government. There was even a black “Brain Trust” in Roosevelt’s so-called Black Cabinet (an informal group of black educators and activists who advised FDR on racial issues). The Depression changed the Negro emphasis in literature from race issues to class oppression. In 1930 the Communist Party USA organized the League of Struggle for Negro Rights with Langston Hughes as president. Twenty Negroes were lynched that year. In 1931 W. E. B. Du Bois rejected Communism in the pages of The Crisis. But he gave the Communist Party the cause célèbre of the decade when the NAACP decided that the Scottsboro Boys, nine black youths accused of raping two white girls, were not that important and let the Communists take over their defense. (The last Scottsboro “Boy” was not freed until 1950, although the girls had long ago recanted.) Eighteen Negroes were lynched between 1931 and 1932. Negro unemployment for men and women in nineteen major cities was at 25 percent or more. The following year was a very bad one in the South for cotton, thanks in part to the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) curtailment of production and destruction of surplus—programs that also forced out many sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Twenty-four Negroes were lynched in 1933, a year that found 25.4 percent of urban Northern Negroes on relief. Unlike other black communities, Harlem found some fun in adversity with “rent parties.” And, unlike other communities, Harlem was lucky to have a generous, creative mayor in Fiorello La Guardia, elected in 1933. In 1934, the year that fifteen blacks were lynched, the NAACP began formulating a plan for a “systematic coordinated lega
l assault on discrimination in the schools.” In 1935 eighteen blacks were lynched; 1936 and 1937 each saw eight blacks lynched. There were six lynchings in 1938, but only two in 1939—possibly because racists were counting on the efficacy of Mississippi senator Theodore G. Bilbo’s Greater Liberia Act (a back-to-Africa bill) for American blacks.
The 1930s were also a period of transition for the Horne family. Lena and Frank finally left the South. The older generation passed away. Frank went to work for the federal government, and Lena, now a young wife and mother, started on the path to the recognition that would make her the best-known, but not necessarily the most important, member of the black Calhouns.
Meanwhile, the years 1929–1931 were the second happiest of Lena’s young life. They were two years of good friends, a good school, her own room, club meetings, and parties—none of them under Cora’s roof. Cora was only a few blocks away, but she seemed to love Lena best from afar. Lena was staying with Cora’s good friend Laura Rollock, a widow with no children, who loved having Lena to spoil and made her dresses. Mrs. Rollock was active in the NAACP, the Urban League, and amateur theatrics, namely the Junior Follies. In Mrs. Rollock’s house Lena was allowed not only to have Junior Deb club meetings, but to have her own radio—two pleasures Cora had discouraged.
Cora had not meant to be away when Lena arrived from Georgia, but her “grand tour” had been planned for a year. The grand tour, with her other good friend Mrs. Minta Trotman, a fellow NAACP activist, was a gift from Ted, who knew how to stay on his mother’s good side. On September 30, 1929, Cora wrote to Burke from the small French liner De Grasse (I would first sail to Europe on that ship in 1950): “I obeyed Ted’s instructions and we own the boat …” Ted’s instructions to Cora were to tip every hand she saw. And how clever of him to choose the French Line, which never let a passenger’s complexion come between itself and money. She never would have been shown similar courtesy on an American liner.
Cora remembered Lena in her letter to Burke: “… I forgot to leave money for her music but I hope you paid it as Dad will surely return it to you …” Cora’s favorite city on her grand tour was Berlin—“so clean.” In January 1930 she sent a card from Vienna, saying that she had heard from Lena, who was excited about Christmas. “She is a dear little girl,” Cora said.
Lena was thrilled because she remained a paying boarder with Mrs. Rollock when Cora returned from Europe—although she still attended Bahá’í and Republican women’s meetings with her grandmother. While Cora gently but constantly sought to stretch Lena’s mind, in Laura Rollock Lena had a devoted adult who helped her through adolescence by caring about everything except the mind. Despite her Southern education, Lena did well in school. She was a teacher’s pet wherever she went in the South, and this meant that teachers always gave her their best. She loved Girls High School—like its counterpart, a venerable Brooklyn institution, and practically around the corner from Chauncey Street. Boys and girls of the black middle class went to separate high schools, but they got together once a month at Junior Follies rehearsals with Mrs. Rollock. There were boys Lena liked but she was mostly too shy and too busy to make friends with them. Despite her peripatetic Southern childhood, she got good grades, especially in English and history, in her Northern schools. This was a result of Cora’s influence.
Lena resumed her outings with Edwin. Sometimes they went to downtown Brooklyn to the movies. The best excursions, of course, were the ones across the bridge to Broadway. They saw Eva Le Gallienne’s Alice in Wonderland and Fred Astaire in The Gay Divorce. Lena was in love with Fred Astaire. She asked for and was permitted to take dancing and singing lessons. Mrs. Rollock was grooming her to star in the Junior Follies, whose amateur theatrics for charity were always covered as social news in the black press. Cora approved of the lessons in terms of “accomplishments.” At fourteen, Lena was becoming a performer—singing “Indian Love Call” at all the Junior Deb teas.
Then, in 1932, two terrible things happened: Edna returned from Cuba and Cora died. Not only did Edna turn up like the bad penny she was, but she was accompanied by a white Cuban husband who spoke no English. Edna’s Cuban husband, an officer exiled by the Machado revolution, was named Miguel and called “Mike.” Lena was horrified. Worse, now Edna insisted that Lena live with her and Mike in the Bronx. Cora’s death in September 1932 brought the total collapse of Lena’s happy new world. Obituaries revealing Cora’s spiritual seeking appeared in the New York Amsterdam News, Baltimore Afro-American, and Chicago Defender.
The Amsterdam News of September 14, 1932, reported:
Mrs. Horne, Civic Leader, Succumbs. Funeral held for woman who served in numerous movements in city and nation—rites private. Cora Calhoun Horne, prominent over a period of 27 years in the civic and social worlds of Brooklyn, died Thursday (September 8) from natural causes at her home, 189 Chauncey Street. She was 68. Burial of the body was made in Evergreen Cemetery on Monday. Her funeral services … were conducted by A.C. Holley of the Bah’ai, a religious cult, assisted by the Rev. Dr. H.H. Proctor, of Nazarene Congregational Church, and the Rev. George Frazier Miller of St. Augustine P.E. Church … Mrs. Horne … was educated in the public schools of Atlanta and at Atlanta University. She became the wife of Edwin F. Horne of Birmingham, Ala., in 1887. Migrating to this city, she began her public career in 1913. During the late World War she organized and directed a Y.W.C.A. unit for the American Red Cross, and in recognition for her work in this connection was appointed a member of the then mayor’s victory committee.
The deceased is survived by her husband, an inspector in the department of combustibles of the New York Fire Department; a sister, Mrs. Frank A. Smith of Chicago; three sons, Edwin F., Jr. of Pittsburgh; Dr. Frank S., dean of the Fort Valley Normal School of Fort Valley, Ga., and John Burke, a graduate pharmacist of this city. All were present for the internment.
All of Cora’s spiritual homes were represented, except for the Catholic Church—and all of her family was there except for Lena. Edna, at her worst, forbade Lena to attend Cora’s funeral. For the first time in her life, Lena rebelled and had a screaming fight with Edna, insisting that she was going to Cora’s funeral anyway and running several blocks to the funeral home with Edna chasing behind her and making a scene at the door. Edwin announced that Edna was a “skunk” and refused to have anything more to do with her. Unfortunately, Lena had no choice. The Pittsburgh Courier, the highest-circulation black newspaper, by the way, made Ted the center of the story: “Ted Horne’s Mother Buried in Brooklyn.”
Edna did two more cruel things, which Cora would never have permitted, to Lena in 1932. After refusing to allow her to attend Cora’s funeral, she made Lena drop out of Girls High School and go to Wadleigh Secretarial School in the Bronx so that she could earn money to support her mother and stepfather. Taking the long view, it was a very good thing that Lena dropped out of Girls High School—if she had not, she might never have become “Lena Horne.” At the time, however, it felt like a double bereavement. Her grandmother and her friends, the ones who had stuck by her always, were her only constants—and her friends were all at Girls High. Now, once again, she was being wrenched away from everything she knew—this time, however, it was only to the Bronx. Recognizing possible benefits, Edna let Lena continue her singing and dancing lessons (which Ted paid for). Early in 1933 Lena starred in the Junior Follies, singing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” and Harold Arlen’s “I’ve Got the World on a String.” That same year, when the Anna Jones Dancing School played a week at the Harlem Opera House, Lena sang as well as danced with scarves (and electric fans in the wings) to Arlen’s Cotton Club hit “Stormy Weather.” (Lena would sing Arlen’s songs for the next fifty years or more, and he would become a dear friend.)
Edna now made a decision. Lena would have the theatrical career that had eluded her. Besides, they needed the money. Edna knew the dance captain at the Cotton Club from her Lafayette Theatre days. After an audition with some overenthusiastic spinning, very pretty
Lena was hired. Thanks to Bub Hewlett, the numbers king, word went out almost at once that the sixteen-year-old was “protected.” Lena was also informally protected by members of the Cab Calloway band, who treated her like a little sister and called her “Brooklyn.” Besides being famously pretty, girls from Brooklyn were famously chaperoned. Edna sat in the cramped chorus dressing room every night, pointedly ignoring the other girls and saying no when Lena pleaded to be able to just once go Lindy Hopping at the Renaissance Ballroom. But Lena was denied those innocent pleasures by Edna, whose constant presence ensured her daughter’s virtue. As for Teddy Horne, he was one of the few Negroes allowed in (at a table near the kitchen, of course) when Lena appeared in the chorus of the 1933 Cotton Club Review.
The Black Calhouns Page 16