Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,13

died tragically of pancreatic cancer when she was just thirty-four. Her namesake and I grew up like brother and sister.

Writer Toni Morrison was another close friend. She had gone to college with Mom and Aunt Shauneille, where they were part of the theater group the Howard Players. I have sweet memories of being in her home and playing with hers sons Dino and Slade.

Mom and Shauneille had been in the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company, along with Godfrey Cambridge, Adolph Caesar, and Al Freeman Jr. I watched my mother costar with Carl Byrd and Graham Brown in Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellans, and in Jamimma with Dick Anthony Williams and Arnold Johnson.

My mother never pushed me into acting, but she suspected I might have talent. Still, she was ambivalent. Shauneille was not: she cast me in a Christmas special she was directing, featuring Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. I ended up going on to act in a Marx Toys commercial as well, where I played with a Johnny West action figure. And then my mom and I appeared as mother and son on a show called Pets Allowed.

In spite of these occasional gigs, I wasn’t bitten by the acting bug. I didn’t mind the attention, but I didn’t seek it. My feeling for acting was nothing like my feeling for music. Acting would not direct the course of my life. Music was my true north.

My third godmother was Diahann Carroll. Aunt Diahann embraced her success proudly. As a triple threat—actor, singer, dancer—she became a Tony winner (the first Black woman to win Best Actress) and then a movie star. Then she broke ground with Julia, the first-ever TV series centered on a Black professional woman. Aunt Diahann married four times, as well as having a decade-long affair with Sidney Poitier. I was nine in 1974, when my parents took me to the premiere of Claudine, a Black-consciousness film that starred Aunt Diahann alongside James Earl Jones. Mom had a role in Claudine, too. I was on the edge of my seat.

Fourth godmother: Joan Hamilton Brooks in Los Angeles, Mom’s oldest friend. The two had grown up in Bed-Stuy together, gone to Girls High together, and then both worked at NBC. Mom and Aunt Joan were joined at the hip. They would take the subway together every morning and run over to window-shop at Saks during lunch. They went to parties together and enjoyed the attention, but Joan was adventurous, more so than Mom. She liked living on the edge, and she could really sing. We connected. Later in my life, because Aunt Joan had such a youthful spirit, I could talk to her when I couldn’t go to my mother. With her, I could really let my guard down.

Fifth, Joy Homer. She looked like a Hollywood starlet. Aunt Joy and Mom were girlhood friends as well, and they remained sisters until the end. When I was born, the first place we went after the hospital was Joy’s, where we stayed for a week. Throughout our lives, Joy’s home in St. Alban’s, Queens, was an oasis. Countless weekends, Mom and I would take the Long Island Rail Road double-decker to Joy’s house, a lovely Tudor with a pool. Joy’s husband, Lee, owned a successful liquor store in Brooklyn, and they loved throwing lavish parties for family and friends. Joy was a character; she enjoyed her Benson & Hedges 100s and her crystal tumbler of vodka. Our stories would soon intertwine.

Cicely, Shauneille, Diahann, Joan, and Joy. Looking back, I think of them as a five-pointed star, and Roxie was there at the center. Their Black feminine energy is one of the reasons I’ve held on to my sanity through crazy times.

SAY IT LOUD, I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD

Black people have historically been underrepresented or misrepresented in the media. That’s why my mom took me to every remote corner of New York City to find our people doing authentic artistic work. We saw plays, we saw dance, we read books, we heard poetry. Then came a new wave of Black movies.

In 1974, Aunt Diahann Carroll was coming out with her film Claudine. In it, she plays a hardworking single mother raising six kids. Claudine’s boyfriend, played by James Earl Jones, is a garbage man. Together, they struggle to overtake the barriers of urban life. Their social worker is played by Mom. Gladys Knight is the musical voice of the story, singing soulful songs written by Curtis Mayfield.

I really related to Mayfield. His score for Super