Inside the Lifelong Friendship of Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson
When Aretha Franklin was inducted into the second class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, she had a familiar face by her side: fellow inductee and lifelong friend Smokey Robinson. It was rather symbolic that the two kids from Detroit, who grew up playing games in the neighborhood together, had both made […]
Inside Natalie Wood and Mart Crowley’s 20-Year Friendship
Natalie Wood‘s first taste of fame came as a child when she scored the lead role in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street. She would grow up to become a three-time Academy Award-nominated actress, but her mysterious 1981 death has become her lasting legacy. Pioneering gay writer Mart Crowley would also attract international fame when his breakthrough and controversial […]
Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X’s Boundary-Breaking Friendship
On paper, Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X made an unexpected pair — a Japanese American mother of six and a firebrand Muslim minister and Black nationalist. But their brief friendship, interrupted by his assassination in 1965, sheds light on the multi-racial cooperation of the civil rights movement and the broader fight against racial injustice around the […]