Page 44 - All About History - Issue 70-18

Breaking Down
Barriers
How a Jazz Age mega-star put racism under the spotlight
“Y you when tell you I have walked
not lie to
know, friends, that I do
ou
I
into the palaces of kings and queens
and into the houses of presidents.
And much
more. But I could not
walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of
I
coffee, and that made me mad. And when get
mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And
then look out, ’cause when Josephine opens her
mouth, they hear it all over the world.”
This is a small excerpt of the speech Josephine
Baker gave to 250,000 people at the historic
March on Washington on 28 August 1963. The only
woman to address the crowd that day and wearing
her military uniform, Josephine’s words resonated
with their fight for liberty, equality and dignity a her mistresses beat her regularly and made her
–
cause she had spent the last four decades fighting sleep in the basement.
for in the face of adversity and controversy.
Josephine was a woman unlike any other. A
trailblazer for African-Americans, her name is
44
Written by Jessica Leggett
the 1920s and 1930s.
synonymous
with the Jazz Age that swept through
As one of the best entertainers in Paris, she
audiences with her stage performances
dazzled
an era of frivolity and
merged to define
at a time when African and European cultures
razzmatazz, turning Josephine into a star.
This stardom was in stark contrast to
Josephine’s humble beginnings, which fuelled her attention during the Harlem Renaissance,
crusade against racism. Born to stage performers
in St Louis, Missouri, on 3 June 1906, Freda
Josephine McDonald was thrown into a world
of poverty, racism and discrimination. Living off learnt the routines anyway in case another dancer
meagre scraps of food, she worked as a waitress
–
and as a live-in cleaner for white families one of chorus lines and stole the shows with her comedic
By the time she was 15 years old, Josephine
had dropped out of school and married twice,
earning money by dancing steps that she had
learnt in America’s urban black centres. Later in
life, Josephine would reflect on her childhood and
confess, “I danced to keep warm.”
Scouted for her dancing, she ran away
to join a
husband’s surname ‘Baker’ for
she kept her second
vaudeville troupe and got divorced again, although
professional purposes.
Moving to New York City, Josephine attracted
considered the rebirth of African-American arts.
Initially rejected from the chorus lines for being
“too skinny and too dark” a determined Josephine
fell ill. When the opportunity came, she joined the
performances. Wearing caricatured blackface, she
appeared in the Broadway productions Shuffle
Along and The Chocolate Dandies in 1921 and 1924
respectively. Catching the eye of a recruiter for
an all-black dance troupe in France, Josephine