Billie Holiday Research Papers

One day she was flying over the ocean, the next day she was gone, never to be seen again. Amelia Earhart was a pilot and the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1937 Amelia was flying over the Pacific Ocean when she and her plane disappeared. Because Amelia Earhart was such an important person in American History, we need to find out what happened to her. There are quite a few theories about what happened to Earhart. Some of these are she was a spy, gathering information about the Japanese, or she crashed into the Pacific Ocean. One of the most widely believed theories is Amelia Earhart’s disappearance was caused by her plane crashing onto Gardner Island. There is plenty of physical evidence proving she crashed onto the island. Also, there are experts that believe this is what happened to her and there are radio calls from Earhart after her disappearance.

Growing up as sharecropper her whole life, Fannie Lou had faced the struggles of a black sharecropper since the age of six, where she was tricked into picking cotton (Myers Asch, 54). Her family has a home of their own and animals when she was twelve, but soon lost it due to white farmers sabotaging them by poisoning their animals (Myers Asch, 55). Moving on, Lou had an education of her own, where she “[s]he had been a solid student at the local school, winning spelling bees and doing well in reading” (Myers Asch, 55). In addition, she raised two children while living in the Hamer home, where she tried her best to make condition for their sharecroppers “decent” by doing outside jobs (Myers Asch, 58). Due to these conditions and events in Lou’s

Carole King was originally named Carole Klein when she was born in New York City on February 9, 1942 [1]. An accomplished pianist by age 10, Carole began songwriting in her early teens [1]. Shortly after, she helped form a quartet called the Co-Sines and created her stage name, Carole King [1]. While attending Queens College, King met Gerry Goffin, her first husband [1]. Shortly after King and Goffin’s marriage, they

Lena Horne was born on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were Teddy and Edna Scottron Horne. After her father left her at the age of two in order to pursue his gambling career; her mother leaving soon after that to pursue her acting career; she went to live with her grandparents. Through her grandparents influence she became involved with organizations like the NAACP, at an early age.

I’d done my solo and would now move on to pursue other equally unsuccessful ways of getting attention.” Singing in the voice of Billie Holiday seemed to be one of the few ways Sedaris thought he could express his feminine side comfortably. Unfortunately for him, being shot down by Mancini caused him to dispose of such a dream.

To understand the controversy that Billie presented one must first go to the root or source of such controversy and examine Billie's childhood. Billie was born Eleanora Harris to her father Clarence Holiday and mother Sadie Fagan who were just fifteen and thirteen years old, respectively, at the time (A 91). Born between 1912 and 1915 in Baltimore, the date unsure, Billie grew up without her father, who moved away early on in her life.

Billie was born to the name, Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915. She was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Fell's Point section of Baltimore. Her mother, was just 13 at the time of her birth; her father, was 15. Holidays' teenage parents, Sadie Harris (aka Fagan) and probable father, Clarence Holiday, never married, and they did not live together for a long time. Clarence, a banjo and guitar player worked with Fletcher Henderson's band in the early 30s. He remains a shady figure who left his family. Clarence would often be away from home, and during the stay with Henderson, which lasted until 1932, the guitarist severed connections with the Fagans. Billie was an angry chile who lived a hard life. She was raped at the age of 10 soon

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring” (goodreads). She was a tragic heroine because she refused to let her childhood mold her. The tragic heroine downfall began when she started experiencing drugs. Becoming a drug user was the fatal mistake she made when everything in her world went upside down. She then became absolutely ridiculous, than absolutely boring, and this made her a tragic heroine.

Norma Jean Mortenson ignited passion in men across the nation when photographer David Connover captured her beauty at an army airplane facility and opened the World to the booming bombshell. From that moment on, her life changed forever. She began to go by Marilyn Monroe and started her career in acting by co-staring in the film “Dangerous Years” which premiered in 1947. Monroe was the first Playboy model and appeared in the first edition in 1955. She starred in various movies, playing a plethora of roles.

Paget Brewster was earlier doing some local television in San Francisco; then she received her first breakthrough in the form of series Friends. She played the role of Chandler and joey's girlfriend, Kathy on Friends and that embarked her venture in this field also. Paget later bagged some good positions owing to her skills and finally landed the role of Emily Prentiss on Criminal Minds. It was this role that earned her everything from name, fame and money and soon she made her way to the list of big stars. Today she has a massive $245 million which is quite huge, and the credit goes to her skills and hard work.

Billie never had a father figure in her life. Her mother, Sarah married Philip Gough when Billie was just 5 years old but unfortunately the marriage failed. When she was only nine years old, Billie began skipping school. As a result, she was sent to “the House of Good Shepherd, a facility for troubled African American girls”(Billie Holiday Biography.com). She came back seven months later , but then returned to the facility at the age of ten where “she was molested and abused” (Ward). Two years after she moved to New York City where “she worked as a prostitute in Alice Dean’s brothel” (Ward).

Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1917. His father, a cowboy, taught him songs of the Indians, folk tunes of the Scottish, and western songs. In his early childhood Woody Guthrie had a tragic turn around in his childhood. He had lost his sister Clara to an unfortunate accident. That set-in the motion of institutionalization of his mother, leading to the loss of his mother.

Marilyn Monroe’s success in Hollywood was built on a ruthless control of her own image, the incredibly stunning blonde bombshell hair and an hourglass figure that every girl in today’s generation would want as famous celebrities like Kim Kardashian have it. There are many opinions about the details of Marilyn’s life, theories, and rumours no matter what had actually happened to this iconic star she was one of the biggest influential person of the 20th century to many people. Even though Marilyn had all the fame, and lots of attention from males her life when the cameras weren’t rolling was completely different. Marilyn had many problems in her life such as her mother being institutionalized as a paranoid schizophrenic which led her to not having

She taught herself how to play guitar, and she had big dreams for herself. Artists that really influenced her were Suzi Quatro and David Bowie. She was "trying to unlock their musical language. " The beginning of her career was most definitely the most difficult time of her career.

The poem’s words echo through your mind, revealing a haunting display. Eleanora Fagan, professionally known as Billie Holiday, performed Strange fruit. She sang the poem not in a melody, but in a screeching tone creating an alarming show. The timbre of her voice’s pitch was intense. In other words, the way Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit in a serious voice, confirms that the poem is not to joke about because it is based on a true story. It is important to realize, that the poem relates to history because it demonstrates how demented racism dominated in the