When Eartha Kitt fought a First Lady at the White House
To most people, Eartha Kitt is one of the defining voices of the 1950s, known for her weirdly seductive Christmas single or, perhaps, her stint as Catwoman alongside Adam West’s Batman.
For the United States government of the 1960s, though, Kitt was a dangerous would-be revolutionary and political enemy of the state, who had no trouble in confronting the First Lady face-to-face.
By the time Lyndon B Johnson ascended to the presidency in 1963, the realm of politics was becoming increasingly unavoidable within US society. Not only had the entire world seen his predecessor, JFK, assassinated, but LBJ’s administration saw the nation further commit itself to the war in Vietnam, as well as a sharp rise in anti-war activism, civil rights struggles, and the emergence of the hippie age.
Perhaps understandably, the president was keen to avoid those subjects wherever possible. So, when organising a White House luncheon in 1968, the administration chose to invite Eartha Kitt. After all, there was little within Kitt’s career up to that point, having been a staple of Broadway and a regular fixture of the pop charts, which suggested she would cause much of a stir.
During her spare time, though, Kitt had long since been involved in the world of activism and politics. As far back as her 1950s heyday, the vocalist had been involved in various charitable causes, and during the 1960s, that snowballed into being an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In short, then, she wasn’t likely to hold back when discussing her views with the president.
Those political differences came to blows during the doomed luncheon, when the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, asked the vocalist for her views on the Vietnam War. “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed,” Kitt bluntly responded. “No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.”
It is unclear what exactly Mrs Johnson was expecting the vocalist to say, but it wasn’t that. Then, during a question-and-answer session, she took that point even further. “The children of America are not rebelling for no reason,” she affirmed.
“They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the people of this country, particularly mothers.”
Explaining, “They feel they are going to raise sons – and I know what it’s like, and you have children of your own, Mrs Johnson – we raise children and send them to war.”
Seemingly, these undeniable, rather astute observations gravely offended the First Lady, who reportedly burst into tears following Kitt’s comments. Despite everything she said being pretty spot on, the media fallout from that luncheon would end up following Kitt around for years. Her stance on Vietnam saw her blacklisted from the mainstream entertainment industry in the US, and it also spurred the CIA on to create an entire file on her and her potential connections to the boogeyman of socialism.
Eventually, of course, everybody in their right mind realised that Eartha Kitt was entirely correct, and that the person pointing out the hypocrisy of the Vietnam War was not quite the villain that she was made out to be by an administration marching young men to their deaths for some ambiguous cause.
Kitt managed to return to her well-deserved stardom in later decades, then, albeit with a newfound reputation as a right-on political activist and revolutionary, who had the nerve to stick it to the man in quite a literal sense.
