"For a weary, disillusioned, post-World War I era, she epitomized a new freedom festivity."
Donald Bogle from Essence.
Born to a life of poverty in 1906,
Josephine Baker eventually
went on to become one of the most
celebrated black performers of her time.
Born Josephine Carson, June 3, 1906 in St. Louis,Missouri to Carrie McDonald and Eddie Carson. She was one of three children in Carrie McDonalds household.However Carrie's relationship with Eddie Carson was not stable , she went on to marry Arthur Martin. Baker grew up sleeping in cardboard shelters and scavenging for food in garbage cans.
Dropped our of school at the age of 12, Baker left her parents' house and got a job as a waitress. Soon afterwards, she married Willie Wells. However, the marriage ended in divorce, and she returned to waitressing. She then joined a group of performers, the Jones Family Band, and had her stage
debut at the Booker T. Washington Theater, a black vaudeville house in St. Louis.
By age 18, she left behind the race riots of St. Louis to New York. She first gained notice for her exuberant dancing as a chorus member in the all-black musical revue Shuffle Along (1921)
in New York City.
During the early 1920s Baker also made regular appearances at the Cotton Club,
the Plantation Club, and other New York nightclubs, performing the Charleston, the black bottom,
and other dances created by African Americans.
During the late 1920s and the 1930s she sang jazz songs and danced in revues at the Folies-Bergère and the Casino de Paris, in 1925 she went to Paris and won enormous fame starring in an American production, La revue Nègre.
In Le Negre Revue, Baker danced with a male partner, her costumes consisting of a skirt of feathers. It was in Paris that Baker's transformation began, she became a celebrated performer with her "Banana Dance" at the Follies Bergere.
This page made by:
Robin Crouse
C.K.S's Women In History