“We were at an amusement park—I traveled with a tutor whenever we went on the road—and my tutor and I, he was British, we would go to this amusement park in Durban, South Africa every day. And I kept saying to my mother: ‘You’ve gotta come to this amusement park, it’s so much fun, there’s bumper cars, and there’s this…’ And she had rehearsals and press conferences, and so one day finally towards the end of our stay she said: ‘Okay, I’ll go with you’. And she came, and we were on the bumper cars, and the bumper cars stopped all of a sudden, and somebody who worked there came over and he said to my mother: ‘Excuse me, ma’am, are you European?’ And she said: ‘No, I’m American.’ And he said: ‘No, no, that’s not what I mean. Are you colored?’ And she looked at her skin and she said: ‘Well, I guess if you consider this colored, then I’m colored!’ And he said: ‘Well, this is a whites only park, so you’re not allowed to be here.’ So my mother calmly stood up and started to leave the park. And I am screaming like a typical teenager: ‘Don’t! Tell him who you are! Tell him that you can be here, that we have V.I.P. status, you can go anywhere you want, you don’t have to live by the rules of the country, you’re different, you’re not the same!’ And she would say to me: ‘Don’t panic’—which I now have tattooed on my wrist—‘don’t panic. Everything happens for a reason. God may not be there when you want him, but he’s always on top.’ And she very calmly left, and she didn’t say anything the rest of the day—I, of course, was pouting and crying and throwing a tantrum—and two days later she was having a press conference and the photographers asked to have her take a picture overlooking the amusement park. And she said: ‘Oh, you know, it’s very funny, I was thrown out of that park the other day.’ Well, the headlines! And the owner of the park was SO apologetic, and he said: ‘What can I do to make it up to you, anything you want…’, and she said: ‘Well, you know, we’re building these schools for African children, your donation would be really welcome.’ So he wrote a check, and he gave us tickets to go to the amusement park, and so my mother went back and she brought two white children and two black children and two colored children. She was not one to stand up on a soapbox and scream and yell and make a big scene, which is how I would’ve done it, I think. She was one who makes change in very subtle ways, and yet it was VERY loud in it’s subtlety.” -Eartha Kitt’s daughter Kitt Shapiro in a 2013 interview describing how her mother dealt with an incident of racism while touring South Africa with her stage act in the early-1970s. Criticized at the time for touring South Africa during apartheid, Eartha responded by stating that “my integrated performances weaken the system” and pointed out that her shows were raising money to build black schools in the country. Returning to South Africa in 1985 during the most violent and volatile period of apartheid, she candidly despaired during a TV interview that Nelson Mandela would ever be released from prison or go on to become the first black president of South Africa. The interviewer, journalist John Cochran, later wrote following Eartha’s passing at the age of 81 in 2008: At some point, I decided we had enough and asked the cameraman to stop shooting. He went off with the tape to make sure it reached a TV satellite. In those days, when we had a controversial interview or had pictures of the authorities violently repressing demonstrators, we would often ship the tape to a neighboring black country to avoid censorship by the whites who ran South African television. I stayed behind and chatted a bit with Kitt. Just before I got up to leave, her mood changed. She clearly had had quite enough of all this pessimistic talk. The gloom seemed to lift from her. She suddenly looked 10 years younger. The snap and crackle were back: “What the hell! Things will get better. They’ve got to. Can’t let the bastards get us down!”

Gif of Eartha from an appearance on the long-running game show What’s My Line?, originally broadcast by CBS on July 23rd, 1961.