Who am I? (Josephine Baker) A flamboyant, colorful dancer and entertainer. I'm erratic, domineering, and eccentric on stage as well as off. I am a singer, dancer, a French spy, and a woman who tried to create a utopian community in a world that didn't allow such ironies.
I was born in Saint Louis, Missouri on June 3, 1906. My mother, Carrie McDonald (who worked as a domestic) was married to my father Eddie Carson. My father was a loyal musician, who played the drums. After the of my brother's birth, Richard, my father abandoned us. My mother later remarried my stepfather, Arthur Martin, when I was five.
Being abandoned by my real father and living with a stepfather who was unable to provide sufficiently for the family, I gained a mistrust for men and felt that I should depend on myself. My family lived in extreme poverty, moving and struggling for survival.
Paris Sunset from the Louvre window
Metro de París
Ziegfeld Follies, 1912 advertising art, scanned by...I was a rebel in school. Though the law permitted a child eight years of age to be sent out for work and providing to go to school also, I was sent out to work at that age. I had come into a bad misfortune with my first employer who was abusive. I quit when she plunged my arm in a pot of boiling water. Despite that terrible account with work, I later found a second employer who treated me much better.
Before I was fourteen, I ran away form home and supported myself by finding a job waiting on tables. Then I married my first husband, Willie Wells. I later became pregnant and after I lost the child, I was down away with Willie.
I was strongly attracted by show business and thereafter, joined a street band, THE JONES FAMILY. As I worked as the Dresser...