Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. Her performance in its revue Un vent de folie caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the "Black Venus", the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess". Louis, Missouri , she renounced her U.
Baker, who refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, is also noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement. After thinking it over, Baker declined the offer out of concern for the welfare of her children. Louis, Missouri. In the book, he discusses at length the circumstances surrounding Baker's birth:.
The records of the city of St. Louis tell an almost unbelievable story. They show that Baker's mother Carrie McDonald She was discharged on June 17, her baby, Freda J. McDonald having been born two weeks earlier. Why six weeks in the hospital? Especially for a black woman of that time who would customarily have had her baby at home with the help of a midwife? The father was identified on the birth certificate simply as "Edw" I think Josephine's father was white—so did Josephine, so did her family Louis say that Baker's mother had worked for a German family around the time she became pregnant I have unraveled many mysteries associated with Josephine Baker, but the most painful mystery of her life, the mystery of her father's identity, I could not solve.
The secret died with Carrie, who refused to the end to talk about it. She let people think Eddie Carson was the father, and Carson played along, but Josephine knew better. Louis, a racially mixed low-income area near Union Station, consisting mainly of rooming houses, brothels, and apartments without indoor plumbing. Her mother married Arthur Martin, "a kind but perpetually unemployed man", with whom she had a son and two more daughters.
I can still see myself standing on the west bank of the Mississippi looking over into East St. Louis and watching the glow of the burning of Negro homes lighting the sky. We children stood huddled together in bewilderment So with this vision I ran and ran and ran By age 12, she had dropped out of school. She also lived as a street child in the slums of St. Louis, sleeping in cardboard shelters, scavenging for food in garbage cans, [ 25 ] making a living with street-corner dancing.
