Pearl Bailey: The Broadway star who sang America’s soul

Описание: June 8, 1967: Pearl Bailey stands in the wings of the St. James Theatre, sequins like armor, smile like strategy. In minutes she will make Broadway history—headlining the landmark all-Black *Hello, Dolly!**—and turn joy into a form of resistance. Born Pearla Mae in Newport News and tempered on the Great Migration’s circuit, Bailey learned early that a Black woman’s laughter could disarm a room and survive a century. She crooned, joked, code-switched, and carried audiences through Jim Crow, Vegas, Hollywood, and TV, while the private cost mounted: masking sorrow, managing stereotypes, and soothing America with songs that were also prayers. Marriage to jazz giant **Louie Bellson**, a late-life theology degree at **Georgetown**, and her memoir ***The Raw Pearl** revealed the mind behind the mirth. When cancer stilled her voice in 1990, her lesson endured: happiness can be armor—and activism—when wielded with genius.
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