Editing Billie Holiday (section)

== Personal Struggles ==

Holiday's life was marked by exploitation, addiction, and the racism that constrained African American artists regardless of their talent. Her relationships with abusive managers and romantic partners cost her financially and emotionally, while heroin addiction led to arrest, imprisonment, and the revocation of her cabaret card, which prevented her from performing in New York clubs where she had built her reputation. These struggles affected her voice, which deteriorated in her later years, though many listeners found her late recordings even more emotionally powerful for their evidence of suffering survived.<ref name="nicholson"/>

The racism Holiday faced throughout her career—segregated hotels, audiences, and professional opportunities—demonstrated the limitations that even the most celebrated Black artists encountered. Her arrest for drug possession and subsequent imprisonment, while white entertainers with similar problems received medical treatment rather than criminal prosecution, illustrated the double standards that made her life more difficult than her white contemporaries'. Holiday's death on July 17, 1959, at age 44, ended a life that had produced artistic achievement sufficient to establish her as one of the century's most important musicians.<ref name="blackburn"/>