Dr. Hannah Thuraisingam Robbins

In the 1970s, she speaks out for black women radicals like Angela Davis when she's incarcerated.

But I think it's also worth saying that through the 40s, she had been supporting radical politicians, helping with union fundraisers and thinking about the ways in which black political organising could function.

And then in civil rights, she came to understand that

the way she'd been used as a figurehead or an aspirational symbol of blackness was actually really negatively loaded and started to talk publicly about that and kind of relearn her black radical consciousness, I guess.

Yeah.

So by this point, she and Lenny have separated because she was just less interested in her music career and more involved in political activism.

What the heck?

Well, sometimes it's nice that it goes that way.

So they separate and then her father and her son both pass away within six months of each other.

Tell us about her music career in the 80s.

So the...

Appearance on The Wiz is really symbolic because she has transitioned into being essentially an industry veteran and she gets to basically sing a song that Diana Ross has just performed and we have a kind of classic version and then we have this blues gospel reworking of it specifically for her and that throws out what she sounded like at MGM and completely reforms her sound.

As a result, she starts working live again and

And she has a one woman show called The Lady and Her Music, which opens in 1981 and runs on Broadway for a year.

She has some time in Las Vegas as well.

And from that, she wins a special Tony Award.

That is a speech worth watching if anyone has five minutes.

And she wins two Grammys.

And in this moment, she really moves from interpreting music by other people kind of being told where to stand and what to sing to becoming Lena Horne, truly herself on stage, I think.

So Lena Horne relentlessly talked about the loneliness and isolation that she felt at MGM and that it made her seem like she didn't want to be in community with other Black performers.