Celebrating Women’s History Month

Billy Strayhorn Songs Inc. and the Billy Strayhorn Foundation celebrated the month of March as Women’s History Month. The celebration and acknowledgement highlights the amazing contribution of women to events in history and contemporary society. With this post, we honor Lillian Strayhorn Young, mother of jazz icon Billy Strayhorn. Lillian was born in Hillsborough, North Carolina in 1891. As a young woman, she attended Shaw University in Raleigh, which was one of the first historically black colleges in the United States, founded immediately after the Civil War. Billy considered his mom his “Satin Doll” whose persistent maternal love and nurturing gave the world a wonderful musical gift…