Lena Horne Services to be Held Friday in New York

Lena Horne's funeral is to be held at a Roman Catholic church in New York City, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

"Celebrities, relatives and friends will gather Friday morning at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan to remember Horne. The singer and actress died Sunday at age 92."

Veteran journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault was among those who shared memories of Horne on Wednesday, writing on theRoot.com:

"I was 20 years old and still negotiating the space the law had made possible for me as the first black woman student at the University of Georgia. And while it might have been a lonely journey otherwise, I had so much support beyond its walls and that included the women in the sorority I had joined at Wayne State University in Detroit, where I was studying while waiting for the courts to decide whether Georgia had lied when it denied my application on the pretext that there was no room in the dormitory.

"When I was finally admitted in the winter of 1961, my Delta Sigma Theta sorors in Detroit cried as I left on an uncertain and possibly dangerous journey. But after a tumultuous welcome by white students that included a riot outside my dormitory, things settled down for the most part, except for the absence of women like those who had taken me in when I joined them in their sisterhood. They wrote and called, and on one occasion, Jeanne Noble, the brilliant and stunning national president of Delta took advantage of a speaking engagement I had in New York and organized an evening, she said, with some friends, one of whom was a soror.

"I didn't know where we were headed until after Jeanne knocked on the door and I first laid eyes on the woman of the house. I was shocked. Not only because I recognized her face, that wide, wonderful smile immediately, but also, here I was, up close to Lena Horne.

"This was not the Lena Horne I had seen in the little, segregated movie theater of my childhood in Covington, Ga., wearing sequined gowns and furs and looking oh-so-glamorous as she sang 'Stormy Weather.' This was a tiny figure dressed in black pedal pushers (yes, it was the early 1960s) and a pink cotton shirt. But that smile? It added the furs and sequins and made her as tall and stunning as I remembered her on the silver screen. This was possibly my first time ever being at a loss for words. And I was ever more flabbergasted when she greeted us with 'Hey, y'all.' It turned out that Lena was an honorary Delta. . . ."

--Amy Alexander, theWrap.com: Appreciation: The Ferociousness of Lena Horne

--ebonyjet.com: Timeless Beauty

--Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Horne's burden then is Latinos' now

--Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times: An appreciation: Lena Horne

--Kim Nalley, SFGate.com: In response to Eugene Robinson's Lena Horne

--Tonya Pendleton, BlackAmericaWeb.com: With Lena Horne's Passing, an Era Truly Ends

--E.R. Shipp, Harlem World: Lena Horne and Evelyn Cunningham: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered