Billie Holiday #1283

Caption from poster__     Billie Holiday    Holiday had a difficult childhood which greatly affected her life and career. Much of her childhood is clouded by conjecture and legend, some of it propagated by her autobiography, published in 1956. This account is known to contain many inaccuracies. Her professional pseudonym was taken from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and Clarence Holiday, her probable father. At the outset of her career, she spelled her last name "Halliday," presumably to distance herself from her neglectful father, but eventually changed it back to "Holiday." Holiday's grandfather was one of 17 children of a black Virginia slave and a white Irish plantation owner. Allegedly, her mother was only 13 at the time of Holiday's birth in Philadelphia and had moved there in order to hide her out-of-wedlock pregnancy; the 1900 census lists Holiday's mother's birth year as 1896, which would make her 19 when her daughter was born. Clarence Holiday, 16 years old at the time,