"I was like, mama, this city is so big, and everybody wants to be a star. "I tell you, I called my mother a week before, and I was sobbing," she recalls. And I wanted to sing every one of them."Ī complete unknown in the city, Lewis made it to Broadway relatively quickly. And I landed in New York with 10,000 songs in my heart. But I got up there because I felt that's where I belonged. "And I didn't - you know, I didn't have a pot to piss in. "I had taken a few trips to New York while in college to visit my boyfriend, and when I said, 'OK, I'm leaving for New York,' I was like, 'You know what? I think I'm going to go first class,' " she says.
Unlike many young actresses from the Midwest who might've jumped on a Greyhound bus bound for the Big Apple with what little cash they had, Lewis booked a first-class flight to New York. Lewis spoke with NPR's Noel King about the book and how her career began. Jenifer Lewis' new memoir, The Mother of Black Hollywood, details her journey to the spotlight. Along the way, she has become one of them. She has worked with the biggest names in Hollywood and on Broadway. Her career spans decades in film, television and theater. I’m studying Brecht, little boy.Editor's note: This story includes language that may be offensive to some readers. And next time you sit down next to me, you say, ‘Excuse me, Miss Lewis.’ Now get the fuck on where you’re going. If only for the fact that first, we washed you. “So, little boy, when you see a black woman walking down the street, you tilt your hat and acknowledge her existence. First, we washed their bodies.” I let my words sink in and continued. But we black women did something we didn’t have to do before we buried them. Our mothers’ mothers cut the black bodies of their sons and husbands down from the trees. For decades, black men were lynched, often for allegedly looking at a white woman.
I get sick of that shit.” I said, “Well, it might have something to do with this. Without saying so much as “Excuse me,” he sat down next to me in a huff and growled, “Why do black women get so mad when they see us walking down the street with a white girl?” I slowly turned toward this handsome, ebony boy and said, “Do you really want to know the answer to that question?” He said, “Yeah, I really want to know. “A young black man, who I think was a summer intern, approached me in the lobby.
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