The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.

The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.

I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.