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Harlem Renaissance

Eleanora Fagen, who later became Billie Holiday, was born in poverty to a 13-year-old mother on April 15, 1915.

Eleanora Fagen, 1917

"Money, you got lots of friends

Crowding round the door

When you're gone and spendin' ends

They don't come no more...

Mama may have, Papa may have,

But God bless the child that's got his own

That's got his own"

Excerpt from God Bless the Child

As a child, Eleanor Fagen went door to door to white people's homes to wash their dishes or front porch stoops. From an early age, she had to work hard just to survive.