Lena Horne

CTL-E-5958 · Person · musician · 1917–2010

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-02925 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-1051 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5958. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Lena Horne (Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, born June 30, 1917, Brooklyn; died May 9, 2010, New York City, aged 92) joined the Cotton Club chorus at sixteen in 1933 and became one of the defining singers and screen presences of the twentieth century. She toured with Charlie Barnet's band, among the first Black women to sing with an all-white band, and in 1942 became the first Black performer signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio, MGM — though her numbers were shot to be cut for segregated Southern theaters. Her starring roles came in the all-Black-cast Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather (both 1943), whose title song became her signature. She refused segregated USO audiences during the war, was blacklisted in the early 1950s for her associations with Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois, and rebuilt: her 1957 live album Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria was then RCA's best-selling album by a female singer. She sang at the 1963 March on Washington, and her one-woman Broadway show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (1981) ran more than 300 performances and won a Tony Award. She received four Grammy Awards including Lifetime Achievement, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1984.

The record

• Also known as: Lena Mary Calhoun Horne
• Role(s): singer, actor

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Lena Horne entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5958 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranks #751–#1400 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #911). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — defining singer-actor of the century and a Cotton Club alumna of a homed venue; core scope. Vital status: DECEASED — died May 9, 2010, aged 92 (Columbia Encyclopedia; Congressional Record). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): MGM contract 1942: first long-term major-studio contract for a Black performer. Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria (1957): RCA's best-selling album by a female singer to that date. The Lady and Her Music: 300+ Broadway performances from 1981. Four Grammy Awards including Lifetime Achievement; Kennedy Center Honors 1984 (Congressional Record tribute; encyclopedia). MEDIA: photo HELD (Lena Horne portrait, 1941 (Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress) named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5958-lena-horne.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Cotton Club — performed at
  Horne joined the Cotton Club chorus at sixteen in 1933.
• Tony Awards 1981 — honored by
  VERIFIED FACT

Sources

• Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks tribute to Lena Horne (2013; volume 159, issue 24) — the House tribute entered after her death, covering the Cotton Club start, the MGM contract, the blacklist years, and the civil-rights record — https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-159/issue-24/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E145-3 (primary source · build store)
• Columbia Encyclopedia via FactMonster, "Horne, Lena" (accessed 2026-10-16) — reference confirmation of the June 30, 1917 birth, the May 9, 2010 death at 92, and the career outline — https://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/people/arts/pop-jazz/horne-lena (build store)
• https://www.tonyawards.com/winners/year/1981/category/any/show/any/ (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Won Special Tony Award at the Tony Awards 1981 — per the official Tony Awards winners record (tonyawards.com), cross-checked on the per-year winners pages (fetched 2026-10-17)

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Record CTL-E-5958 · Combined Graph record U-02925 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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