She stands 4ft 8in tall, and is the keeper of a beautiful, under-told story about America’s first racially integrated, all-girl swing band, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. “The money rarely got back to the Sweethearts,” Cron said. Winburn occasionally used her exceptional stage management skills to block a curious policeman’s view of the mixed-race band on stage. Cron left the Sweethearts in 1946, and shared an apartment in Spanish Harlem with Helen Saine, her best friend from the band. As we sat in Cron’s room, rifling through USO photos and clippings, I found her cousin’s photos of the camp.

Source: The Guardian December 16, 2019 11:15 UTC