Who is Eartha Kitt from the nonfiction book, Just Us: An American Conversation?

Eartha Kitt was a 20th-century jazz singer and actress. Rankine references her twice in the text to describe an incident that occurred at the White House during the Lyndon Johnson administration. During a luncheon, Kitt made critical statements about the Vietnam War to President Johnson and First Lady Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson. Rankine states that the CIA created a dossier on Kitt afterward and that she was "blacklisted in the United States for the next decade" (219). This is discussed in "liminal spaces ii" as an example of the consequences black people frequently face from the authority structures in the United States for speaking up about injustice.