Happy Birthday: Eartha Kitt (1927–2008)

Eartha Kitt (1927–2008)

Born: January 17, 1927 in North, South Carolina, USA
Died: December 25, 2008 (age 81) in Weston, Connecticut, USA

In 1968, she suffered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. It was reported that she made Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady at the time, cry when she bluntly told her, “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.” However, the public reaction to Kitt’s statements was even more extreme both for and against her statements. Professionally exiled from the United States, she devoted her energies to overseas performances for nearly a decade.

[in an Essence magazine interview regarding her anti-war statements to Lady Bird Johnson and her…