These legendary black singers refused to perform to segregated audiences even at the expense of their career

African Americans in the United States have a chequered past. The Jim Crow segregation and lynching era are a part of the African-American history they would love to blot out.

Unfortunately, those times did happen, and the repercussions have lingered on for years.

Researchers documented 4,075 lynchings of African Americans that were carried out in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 in a recent Lynching in America report.

Blacks were not to mingle with their white counterparts and to date, this can be seen in different racially motivated attacks on the black community.

Racism is the plague that will not go away. Looking through the decades, the Civil Rights movement era in the 1950s saw lots of racially motivated attacks on the black community and other ethnic minorities.

The only way black entertainers at the time could stop these acts of racism and segregation was to speak up against performing at segregated events. They wanted an all-inclusive audience even if it was at the expense of their careers.

These are some of the entertainers who unapologetically refused to perform at segregated functions: