True Beauty and Grace

By Welcome to Harlem on Nov 9, 2010

Harlem's history, must reads, quick bits

dandridge_dorothy_130x171[getty] — Dorothy Dandridge

Singer, actress. Born November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio, Dorothy Dandridge sang at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club and Apollo Theatre and became the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress.

Dandridge’s mother, the actress Ruby Dandridge, urged her two young daughters into show business in the 1930s, when they performed as a song-and-dance team billed as “The Wonder Children”. Dandridge left high school in the late 1930s and formed the Dandridge Sisters trio with her sister Vivian and Etta Jones. They performed with the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra and at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Dandridge—who had a mixed racial heritage, early on confronted the segregation and racism of the entertainment industry

Read her incredible story http://www.biography.com/articles/Dorothy-Dandridge-9542081