Black poetess Nikki Giovanni interviews singer Lena Horne in this special Black Journal program focusing on the Black woman. Miss Horne speaks candidly about her divorce and remarriage to a white man, orchestral conductor Lennie Hayton. She admits that she "failed" her first husband: "I had married first a Black man and I wasn't a big enough woman to help him," she says. Asked about her views on the recent arrest of Black revolutionary Angela Davis, Miss Horne asserts: "What I'm so afraid of is this actually is a calculated move in many instances because - the kind of strength that these young people have, which may not always be comparable to the kind our ancestors had, is so positive and so fearless that it frightens people."
In another segment, a panel of six prominent Black women discuss the role of the Black woman in today's society. Participating in the panel are Verta Mae Grosvenor, author of "Vibrations Cooking"; Jean Fairfax, NAACP Legal Defense lawyer; Martha Davis of the Harlem Drug Fighters Union; Marion-Etoile Watson, producer for Metromedia Television (Channel 5, New York City); Bibi Amina Baraka (Mrs. LeRoi Jones); and Joan Harris, hostess of NBS's "Positively Black." Also on the program Mrs. Grosvenor's eight-year-old daughter, Kali, reads from her recently published book, "Poems by Kali"; The Church of the Shrine of the Black Madonna holds a woman's day ceremony to honor "the generations of struggle that the Black woman has made in order for Black people to survive"; during the ceremony in the church, author Sonia Sanchez reads her poem "Queens of the Universe."
Black Journal began as a monthly series produced for, about, and - to a large extent - by black Americans, which used the magazine format to report on relevant issues to black Americans.
