Bernie Mac taught us the meaning of the word "motherfucker."

Dancer Cyd Charisse had the "world's most valuable legs," but ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya charmed Russia with her view that "ballet should be imbued with life, not artificiality."

Newsman Tim Russert's death made all of NBC choke up.

Heath Ledger left behind ex-fiancee Michelle Williams, daughter Matilda, and a terrifyingly adept performance as the Joker.

Singer Yma Sumac was the only Peruvian on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

A black woman married to a white man, Mildred Loving challenged Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and won, invalidating such laws in 15 other states as well.

Golden Girl Estelle Getty explained that "a whore, a slut, a tramp, it's all the same."

Odetta wowed Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and America with her "liberation songs."

George Carlin pointed out that "pro-life is anti-woman" and his ghost told a psychic "what a bunch of bullshit religion is."

Majel Roddenberry was the voice of Star Trek's USS Enterprise, and Trek fan Joan Winston was almost as popular as Kirk himself.

Isaac Hayes lent his genius to both Chef and Shaft.

Pinup Bettie Page (link NSFW) turned America on with "a pride in her body unusual for the times."

David Foster Wallace wrote about depression, September 11, and cruise ships with both gravity and humor.

Paul Newman was "the thinking woman's sex symbol."

Lesbian activist Del Martin wed her longtime partner in the first legal gay marriage in California; the battle she helped wage goes on in her absence.

Remember Them Well [Newsweek]

"They were liberation songs,” she said in a videotaped interview with The New York Times in 2007 for its online feature "The Last Word." "You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life." […]

Odetta marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and performed for President John F. Kennedy. Bill Clinton awarded her the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of the Arts and Humanities. She sang and performed well into the 21st century, and her influence stayed strong, and one critic called her voice a "force of nature."

Time magazine's Richard Corliss writes: "During the folk boom, each Odetta gig, in coffee house or a concert hall, was a master class of work songs, folk songs, church songs, and an eloquent tutorial in raw American history. Identifiable from the first syllable, her voice fused the thrill of gospel, the techniques of art song, — the wisdom that subtlety sometimes trumps volume — and the desperate wail of blues." Bob Dylan credited her first solo record in 1956, Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, as "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing… [It] was just something vital and personal."

Odetta, Voice Of Civil Rights Movement, Dies At 77 [NY Times]
Odetta: Soul-Stirrer, 1930-2008 [Time]
American Folk Music Legend Odetta Dies At 77 [USA Today, via AP]
Odetta, 77; Sang the Soundtrack For The Civil Rights Movement [Washington Post]