Florence Ballard contains the line "Remember the sadness in Florence Ballard's eyes". On his 2006 album "Hip Hop is Dead", hip-hop artist Nas mentions the Ballard/Ross rivalry in his song "Blunt Ashes": ""When Flo from the Supremes died/Diana Ross cried/Many people said that she was laughing inside."" In his short story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band", Stephen King, through the late disc jockey Alan Freed, includes Ballard as one of the deceased artists who performs in a town called "Rock and Roll Heaven". "Dreamgirls", a 1981 Broadway musical, chronicles a fictional group called "The Dreams," and a number
Florence Ballard The rape occurred in an empty parking lot off Woodward Avenue. Ballard responded by secluding herself in her house refusing to come outside, which worried her groupmates. Weeks later, Ballard told Wilson and Ross what had happened. Though Ross and Wilson were sympathetic, they were also confused because Ballard was considered to be strong-willed and unflappable. Both Wilson and Jesse Green, an early boyfriend of Florence's, had described her as a "generally happy if somewhat mischievous and sassy teenager." Wilson believes that the incident heavily contributed to the more self-destructive aspects of Ballard's adult personality, like cynicism, pessimism, and fear