Billboard just released its Best Pop Songs list, and Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” sat at the top, giving our Queen of Pop new shine more than a decade after her untimely death. This coronation came just in time for Black TikTok’s algorithms to dust off recurring conspiracy theories about Whitney being the secret love child of John Houston and late actress Teresa Graves. It’s clear from the comments that folks are losing their minds over the crazy idea that his ...sigh ... somehow could be true.
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One Tiktoker, who claimed she knew both women, said Whitney and Graves had the same feet. Janae’supaaBadd, a commenter, said: “They took her (Graves) child from her. And kept her a secret and she couldn’t do anything ...”
ToshiKOchella, another commenter, said, “Yes!! She looks just like Teresa Graves!! I always said that she looks nothing like Sissy at all.wow!”
Another commenter with nearly 108K likes, said, “I can’t unsee - unknow this. You’re onto something.”
Who is Graves?
Don’t know about Graves? Here’s a quick history lesson. She was a Texas-born actress and singer best known for her starring turn as undercover police detective Christie Love in the mid-1970s ABC crime-drama Get Christie Love! Graves was the first Black woman to star in an hour–long TV show, as well as the first for a drama series. (Diahann Carroll was the first Black woman to lead any show on sitcom Julia from 1968-1971.) The show, created after the success of a made-for-TV Blaxploitation movie of the same name, lasted barely a year but was a fave of little Black girls like me who loved seeing someone who looked like them on screen. We—OK, me—could frequently be heard repeating Love’s signature catchphrase, “You’re under arrest, Sugah!”, which found renewed fame in 2002 in Austin Powers in Goldmember when the character Foxxy Cleopatra (played by Beyoncé) uttered it.
Though Graves guested on other shows throughout the late ’70s, she retired from acting in the early ’80s to focus on her Jehovah’s Witness religion. She died in Los Angeles in a house fire in 2002, with her neighbors unaware of her celebrity past.
Now, we’ll admit that in some photos there is an uncanny resemblance between Houston and Graves. We even acknowledge the two sound a little alike when talking. But conspiracy theories aside, Graves wasn’t the powerhouse singer Houston was; Cissy Houston—Whitney’s actual mother—could blow.
Whitney was born in New Jersey in 1963, and there’s no evidence Graves was in that state then. And the suggestion that John Houston had an affair with what would’ve been a 15-year-old Graves and brought his lovechild home for Cissy to raise is troubling, especially when none of the major players are able to address these long-whispered industry rumors.
While I hope deep down we all know this theory is very likely untrue, but when Black TikTok speaks, however, its voice carries weight—truth be damned.
Kendra Lee is a writer who lives just outside Washington, D.C.
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