that role for 20 years before moving back to Baltimore. While still in Florida, she became the first African American precinct voting clerk and 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 converted to Christian Science and credited the religion with helping her fight her 12-year battle with cancer. Around 1968, she formed Afram House, a mail-order cosmetics company for African Americans. She moved back to Baltimore and married her high school sweetheart. She died from breast cancer on December 16, 1978, at the age of 76. Further reading Dance, Stanley. The World of Swing: An Oral History of Big Band Jazz. Cambridge: Da Capo Press (2001); Hine, Darlene Clark. Black Women in America An Historical Encyclopedia. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc. (1993); References External links [ Blanche Calloway on] Allmusic Blanche Calloway discography 1902 births 1978 deaths Swing singers American women jazz singers American jazz singers African-American jazz composers American jazz composers African-American women composers African-American women singers American women composers Musicians from Baltimore American Christian Scientists African-American activists Converts to Christian Science Deaths from breast cancer Deaths from cancer in Maryland Maryland Democrats Pennsylvania Democrats 20th-century American singers 20th-century jazz composers Musicians from Rochester, New York Singers from Maryland Activists from Rochester, New York 20th-century American women singers 20th-century American composers Jazz musicians from New York (state) Jazz musicians from Maryland 20th-century women composers