Legendary Black actress and singer Ketty Lester is set to be inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall Of Fame (ABHOF).
According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Lester will be inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall Of Fame on Oct. 15. ABHOF announced, on Oct. 7, that she’s one of six inductees for its 28th class. The annual induction ceremony and variety show will take place at the Robinson Center Performance Hall in Little Rock–its first in-person event following a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our 2022 class of inductees continues the tradition of showcasing the tremendous talent that Arkansas produces,” the Black Hall of Fame chairman, Charles Stewart, said. “The covid-19 pandemic paused our plans in 2020 and again in 2021. So, we look forward to an amazing ceremony for our inductees, their family and friends, and others as we celebrate the return to the Robinson and 30 years of recognizing some of our state’s best.”
The 88-year-old actress expressed that she was pleasantly surprised when she discovered that she was being honored.
“Basically, my people in Arkansas didn’t know me because of the name change and stuff like that,” she told the news outlet. “They really didn’t know who I was. And I don’t know how they found out about Ketty Lester. But I think it was my manager here that wrote them and told them, ‘Why don’t you have Ketty Lester in your Hall of Fame?’ But it’s a pleasure to go back there.”
Lester, whose real name is Revoyda Frierson, is best known for portraying the teacher Hester-Sue Terhune in the hit NBC series Little House On The Prairie (1974 – 1982).
She was born in Hope, Arkansas, on Aug. 16, 1934 and was the youngest of 15 children born to a farm family.
“I picked cotton; I picked cucumbers. We raised everything that we ate,” she said about her farm upbringing. “We had a joyful time. To me, that was the joy of my life.”
The Arkansas native later enrolled at San Francisco City College where she majored in nursing and joined a theatre group to earn some extra money. There, she discovered her love of singing which led her to perform at The Purple Onion–a now-defunct popular San Francisco club. Lester performed at The Purple Onion, alongside comedian Phyllis Diller and the iconic poet Maya Angelou, for a year before its owners opened a new location in Hollywood and had her serve as the headlining act.
“So I opened that Purple Onion and I stayed there for about two years. Of course, Maya was still in San Francisco, but she did come to Los Angeles to be with me. And that was when she started writing her poems,” Lester said.
The actress then moved to New York to pursue acting and singing as full-time career, which took after doing so. There, she reportedly met trailblazing entertainers like Sammy Davis Jr. and Dorothy Shay and created the name Ketty Lester after landing a recording contract with the Everest Label–the label that produced her first single “Queen For A Day” (1962). That year, her Grammy-nominated single “Love Letters” reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Her uber successful career also includes numerous appearance on TV and commercials as well as a role in the hit blaxploitation horror film Blacula (1972). She was the first African American woman to appear in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and a daytime soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
