Eartha Kitt speaking truth to power at a 1968 luncheon at the White House hosted by Lady Bird Johnson which resulted in Kitt being blacklisted in the US for nearly a decade.
let it be known that on January 18th, 1968, Eartha Kitt stood in a room full of white women at The Women Doers Luncheon, GOT IN LADYBIRD JOHNSON’S FACE, and told her that the government was sending the best of the youth off to be shot and killed and, in not so many words, that THAT was the reason the youth were rebelling. She ALSO stopped President Johnson after he made a statement claiming that mothers should be responsible for stopping their kids from becoming criminals and asked about “the parents who have to go to work, for instance, who can’t spend time with their children as they should”. It was brushed off by LBJ who only mentioned the funding for day care centers put in place by the recently passed Social Security bill, and then more or less said that the women at that luncheon should figure it out for themselves.
She was blacklisted, but she defended every word she said that day.
So here’s a fun story about LBJ, for those who don’t know it.
LBJ was tall. Really, really fucking tall. And he used it for physical intimidation, all the time. He was infamous, when trying to browbeat people to his way, for getting in people’s face, looming over them and forcing them backwards. It was called “The Treatment,” and very successful. It was caught on film a few times. Look at some examples:
Now look at that picture up there. You can see LBJ trying to start that there. Showing his height, starting to lean in, but still with his elbow on the cabinet. The “Treatment” that had cowed a tremendous amount of very powerful men.
And Eartha Kitt is just. Not. Having it.
This woman was a fucking treasure.
I remember listening to a radio program Eartha Kitt was on where she outlined the events of that luncheon and her anger was as strong twenty years later as it ever was.
47 years ago THIS week.
This ruined her career in the US. Standing up and disagreeing ruined her career. Free speech my arse. So she moved to Paris, and Paris loved her. It was a good nine years or so before Eartha was able to move back.
Forever my hero.
“Following my little talk at the White House, most of my nightclub and hotel engagements in this country were canceled—even though contracts had been entered into. That I should be singled out appears, at first glance, to be puzzling. Scores of Hollywood, television, and music personalities, both American and foreign-born, have been far more critical of America’s foreign and domestic policies than I have. The difference, of course, is that I am not Barbara Howar or Jane Fonda or Candice Bergen. I am a black woman.
I have always known that racism was widespread in America; after all, I spent most of my childhood in South Carolina on a cotton plantation and in the streets of Harlem. But it took the aftermath of the 1968 incident to prove to me just how deeply racial prejudice is rooted in the American national character.
Because I am black, I had to be taught a lesson, and put back into my place as a singing, dancing, mindless automaton who saw no evil, did no evil, and most important, publicly spoke no evil.” – Eartha Kitt