Blanche Calloway - Later Career and Life

Later Career and Life

After years of struggling for major success, in 1938 she declared bankruptcy and broke up her orchestra. In 1940 she formed a short-lived all-women orchestra, feeding on the popularity of all-female bands during World War II. The band struggled to get bookings and soon disbanded after forming. Calloway continued to sing on occasion and moved to a suburb of Philadelphia with her husband in the mid-1940s. There, she became a socialite and served as a Democratic committeewoman. She would eventually separate with her husband after discovering he was a bigamist.

In the early 1950's she moved to Washington, D.C. where she managed a nightclub Crystal Caverns. Calloway would hire Ruth Brown to perform at the club, and would become Brown's manager, who went on to credit Calloway with discovering her and helping her band land a record deal with Atlantic Records. In the late 1950s she moved to Florida and became a DJ for WMBM in Miami Beach. Eventually, she became program director of the station, and served in that role for 20 years before moving back to Baltimore. While still in Florida, she became the first African American precinct voting clerk, and was the first African American woman to vote in Florida in 1958. She became an active member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, also serving on the board of the National Urban League. In 1964, she and about forty other African American women protested with the NATO Women's Peace Force at The Hague.

Calloway would convert to Christian Science, and she credited the religion with helping her fight her 12 year battle with cancer. Around 1968, she formed Afram House, Inc., a mail order cosmetics company for African Americans. She eventually moved back to Baltimore, and married her high school sweetheart. She died on December 16, 1978, from breast cancer.