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When we think of strong black women, so many names come to mind – Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis and also Tina Turner. After 20 years of trauma at the hands of her spouse and creative partner, Turner transformed her life and became one of the world’s biggest superstars.
Many of us can recite lines from the film What’s Love Got to Do with It, which was loosely based on Tina Turner’s life. What might be less known is that she held the Guinness World Record for the largest audience at a single concert and that she is the first artist to have a UK top 40 hit in seven consecutive decades. Tina Turner is widely known as the Queen of Rock and Roll, a title deserving of a singer who helped transform the musical genre. Before there was Janet Jackson and Beyonce, there was Tina Turner. And the story in the film starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne is just part of the entirety of her epic tale.
Though Turner’s story is atypical, as she eventually became a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, her beginnings were humble. She recalls picking cotton in the fields, her father was an overseer of sharecroppers and like many black women, she worked as a domestic cleaning houses. She found herself in the same cycle that her mother had been in, as a victim of domestic violence. Similarly, her mother freed herself from an abusive environment. The relatability of her story to scores of nameless black women is testament to her determination, strength, and resilience. Though we know Tuner as a survivor of domestic violence by the hands of her former husband Ike Turner, she cannot be defined solely as such.
Turner is one who took matters into her own hands and fought back against not only a single man but an industry that doesn’t respect black women as much as they should. While still in high school, she took control of her destiny by having the courage to grab the mic at an Ike Turner performance and sang without anyone else’s permission. This act of bravery landed her the role of the lead singer with Ike Turner’s band. The strong Black woman in Turner allowed her to leave a man whom she cared for deeply because of his contributions in her life and career.
The true test of her resilience is what happened after she decided to leave. Ike Turner had trademarked and given her the name Tina Turner because he wanted to be able to replace her with another Tina Turner if the original decided to leave. In their divorce she was sure to maintain the name she had worked so hard for. She built a career as a superstar with a name that people were familiar with but also one that she needed to transform. She worked diligently performing in smaller shows in Las Vegas hotel ballrooms to pay back the debts she had from canceled shows with Ike. In 1984, she released her solo album Private Dancer that went 5x platinum in the U.S. alone.
Turner spent 20 years with Ike Turner, but more importantly she spent about 30 years existing at the top of the musical landscape. And her legacy is still being celebrated, as she came out of retirement in 2020 to remix her classic, “What’s Love Got to Do with It.” Though coming into her solo career she had name recognition, Turner reinvented herself and her sound at the age of 44. It takes a strong woman to do that in an industry that tends to fetishize women as naive sexual objects. Turner fashioned herself into a well-respected superstar with the likes of other rock and roll legends like Mick Jagger and Bono of U2. The music she has produced as a solo artist is rock and roll at its finest; it wreaks of self-determination and rebellion.
Tina Turner is the epitome of the Strong Black Woman (SBW) Joan Morgan describes in her text When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. Morgan writes, “When you’re raised to believe that the ability to kick adversity’s ass is a birthright – a by-product of gender and melanin – you tend to tackle life’s afflictions tenaciously.” Turner’s story really is like witnessing someone kicking adversity’s ass. And there really isn’t any solid proof that it’s because she’s a black woman that she got it done; but it is because she’s a black woman that she experienced life as she did. The way she dealt with her circumstances is atypical. Most women who have undergone trauma don’t go on to be worldwide superstars. She didn’t crumble under the pressures of a man who helped her become who she is but also abused her. And she didn’t rescind the personality that she also built. She fought to be what she was meant to be – a legend.
It shouldn’t be necessary to be as strong as Tina Turner is, but so many black women have proven time and again that so many of us are capable of rising to the occasion.
Source: Urban One Honors / TV One
