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A diva for all times - Sister Speak - Biography

Ebony, March, 2004 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

BEFORE Halle Berry and Dorothy Dandridge and even Lena Horne, there was Etta Moten, a pioneering Black Broadway and film star whose recent passing at age 102 automatically adds another chapter to Black history and herstory.

A diva without drama, Moten was the darling of Hollywood in an era when lynchings were still common. When she was cast in her first role as a widow and not as a maid, the Black press rejoiced, calling her "The New Negro Woman."

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To give you a clue to her stature, Sidney Poitier had a crush on her, and at her 100th birthday tribute in 2001, he sent a letter remembering an evening in the 1940s when he watched her rehearsing for Lysistrata, calling her the "incomparable Etta Moten Barnett." She was, "the most incredible, amazing, voluptuous, dignified and sensual actress to grace the Broadway stage in my lifetime," Poitier said. But too many people still don't know about the woman who once told me, "I've always said that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth," and "I'm not ready for either one." Miss Moten had moxie.

Born in 1901 in Texas, she married out of high school and had four children--one dying at birth. In the 1920s, she made an unconventional decision 50 years before its time, divorcing her husband and leaving her daughters with her parents, she went to college, graduating from the University of Kansas in 1931--when she was 30 years old. She hit Hollywood with a splash, singing the song, "My Forgotten Man," in The Gold Diggers of 1933. The next year she became the first Black woman to entertain at the White House when she was invited to perform at a White House birthday party for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the film, Flying Down to Rio, her performance of "The Carioca" sparkled, and she told me she wore "a hairdo with fruit on my head--before Carmen Miranda." That song was nominated for an Academy Award for best song. After several film triumphs, Broadway beckoned, and she responded with critically acclaimed performances in her signature role as "Bess" in George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess.

When Moten talked about George Gershwin, it was from memory, not history. The legend is that Gershwin wrote the role of "Bess" and the song "Summertime" for Moten.

In 1934, she married Claude Barnett, and began what she later called "a 33-year legal love affair." Barnett, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute and protege of Booker T. Washington, was the founder of the Associated Negro Press. She said later that he was too busy to bore her and she was too busy to bore him. The pair was a "power couple" a generation and a half before that word became part of the American vocabulary. In her later years as her stage career declined, the activist pair made several pioneering journeys to Africa, representing presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on official trips to the continent. Her collection of African artifacts is one of the oldest and largest privately held collections in the world. She was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1979, and as a civic leader and patron of the arts, she served as a member of many cultural and educational institutions.

But she was also a premiere example in staying active and growing old gracefully. She didn't stop wearing high heels until she was 95! And when she was well over 90, she was seen dancing the Electric Slide at parties.

She was a Sister, a feminist without fanfare, an advocate for Africa, an avid supporter of the arts and a classy lady whose grace and beauty will be missed.

A diva for all times - Sister Speak - Biography

Ebony, March, 2004 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

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