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  • "Lena Not the Only One":Representations of Lena Horne and Etta Moten in the Kansas City Call, 1941-1945
  • Megan E. Williams (bio)

"Why should Hollywood writers insist that Miss [Lena] Horne is the only good looking [black] woman in the U.S.A. who can act?" posed a wartime issue of The Call (Kansas City, Missouri).1 Writers at The Call, the regional black newspaper, understood that this Hollywood tokenism, which framed Horne as exceptional, perpetuated white supremacy by substituting symbolic equality for tangible civil rights.2 Throughout the war years, The Call challenged white popular culture's representation of Lena Horne as unique, proclaiming, "Lena Not the Only One."3 First, with its weekly "Stage and Screen" coverage of black female performers, the newspaper asserted that "there are thousands of beautiful young Negro girls" with talent.4 Second, The Call called attention to its own extraordinary hometown celebrity, Kansas-City-born Etta Moten, star of a Porgy and Bess revival. By focusing on Moten, The Call echoed a goal of the national civil rights movement, as set forth by NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White and symbolized by Horne: to expand African Americans' role in the entertainment industry and alter conventional images of African Americans. The Call, by presenting Etta Moten as a "home-town" counterpart to Horne, localized a national program of uplift and community formation through a specific role model that represented a new type of black female respectability—the glamorous middle-class entertainer.5 Moreover, The Call's representation of Horne and especially its portrayal of Moten, as "the gal from Kansas City" who "makes good," reflect the special character of Kansas City, Missouri, as well as editor [End Page 49] Chester A. Franklin's newspaper itself, with its focus on local and regional events, community church news, local culture and activism, and affirmative portrayals of middle-class, or "distinguished," black Kansas Citians.6

Scholars, notably Richard Dalfiume, have long maintained the importance of understanding the World War II years as the "'forgotten years' of the [black] revolution," a watershed moment in black history, and the "years of transition in American race relations [that] comprise" the roots of the modern civil rights movement.7 Historian Ronald Takaki has argued that World War II "became for [African Americans and other people of color living in America] what black intellectual leader W.E.B. Du Bois called the 'War for Racial Equality.'"8 At the same time, white Americans would come to view World War II as a "good war" for the preservation of American equality and liberty; a war abroad in the name of democracy and Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.9 Dissatisfied with the Jim Crow armed services of World War I, African Americans challenged America's ideological hypocrisy, a critique which described the current war as a mission to extend freedoms to "everywhere in the world" while discrimination and segregation persisted at home. At the same time, many blacks embraced the war effort, viewing Hilterism as a dire alternative to an unrealized democracy. In an attempt to support the war effort yet continue these demands for full civil rights reform, the black press mounted a "Double Victory" campaign in 1942. Yet the black press, mindful of suppression and censorship during World War I, were wary of being accused of sedition.10 The Pittsburgh Courier initiated this program, with "The first V for victory over enemies without, the second V for victory over our enemies from within."11 Sparked by a letter to the editor from James G. Thompson of Wichita, Kansas, the "double VV" was a collective refusal to "live half American."12 The majority of black newspapers adopted Thompson's "Double V" initiative during World War II.13

Walter White, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), adopted the "Double V" slogan to fight racism on two fronts—abroad and at home. He viewed the derogatory representation of African Americans in the entertainment industry as a facet of domestic racism and sought to achieve a civil rights victory in Hollywood. In 1942, Walter White...

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