Many in the black press admired her popularity and saw her as a role model: not only was she a great entertainer but she was also able to serve as "an ambassador of good will from the blacks to the whites... a living example of the potentialities of the Negro of ability when given a chance to make good". Mills was featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair and was photographed by Bassano's studios and Edward Steichen. Her signature song was her biggest hit, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird". Another of her hit songs was "I'm Cravin' for that Kind of Love". Death Exhausted from more than 300 performances of the hit show Blackbirds in London in 1926, she became ill with tuberculosis. She died of infection following an operation at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York City, New York on November 1, 1927. She was 31 years old. Most sources, including black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier, and mainstream publications, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe, reported that she died of complications from appendicitis. Her death shocked the music world. The New York Times reported that more than 10,000 people visited the funeral home to pay their respects; thousands attended her funeral, including James Weldon Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and stars of the stage, vaudeville and dance. Honorary pall bearers including singers Ethel Waters, Cora Green, and Lottie Gee, all of whom had performed with Mills. Dignitaries and political figures of different races sent their condolences. She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, New York. Her widower, Ulysses Thompson, a native of Prescott, Arkansas, was a dancer and comedian, having learned his trade in the world of circuses and travelling medicine shows in the early years of the century. He subordinated his career to hers, acting as her manager, promoter, minder and companion. After her death, he continued performing, travelling around the world, including appearances in China and Australia, until the late 1930s. He later married Gertrude Curtis, New York's first black woman dentist (1911) and the widow of the lyricist Cecil Mack (born as Richard Cecil McPherson). Thompson outlived both of his wives; he died in 1990, at the age of 101, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Legacy Mills is credited with having been a staunch and