Black Actress Fredericka "Fredi" Carolyn Washington (1903-1994)

Fredi Washington was a pioneering black actress whose very light complexion and green eyes often were impediments to her extraordinary acting skills. In the few films in which she acted her enormous talent as an actress couldn't be hidden.

Washington's first film performance Duke Ellington's musical short, Black and Tan (1929), as a dancer. In Hollywood she was urged to "pass" for fully white by studio heads, who said "they would make her a bigger star than Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Constance Bennett and Greta Garbo." Washington refused.