![]() ![]() And you all know what that means.īut when I ran away, yes, when I ran away to another country, I didn’t have to do that. Louis a long time ago, the conductor directed me to the last car. And these things had never happened to me before. I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America too.īut I must tell you, when I was young in Paris, strange things happened to me. “Why, she was a devil.” And you know something…why, they are right. Now I know that all you children don’t know who Josephine Baker is, but you ask Grandma and Grandpa and they will tell you. It was like a fairyland place.Īnd I need not tell you that wonderful things happened to me there. But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared. Many of you have been there, and many have not. When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Not beat me, mind you, with a club-but you know, I have seen that done too-but they beat me with their pens, with their writings. And I knew that you had no way to defend yourselves, as I had.Īnd as I continued to do the things I did, and to say the things I said, they began to beat me. Then later, as these things began happening to me, I wondered if they were happening to you, and then I knew they must be. And you must know now that what I did, I did originally for myself. What she said appears below.įriends and family…you know I have lived a long time and I have come a long way. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” oration. ![]() Wearing her uniform of the French Resistance, of which she was active in World War II, she and Daisy Bates were the only women to address the audience. In 1963, at the age of 57, Baker flew in from France, her adopted homeland, to appear before the largest audience in her career, the 250,000 gathered at the March on Washington. Yet through much of her later life, Baker became a vocal opponent of segregation and discrimination, often initiating one-woman protests against racial injustice. Josephine Baker is remembered by most people as the flamboyant African American entertainer who earned fame and fortune in Paris in the 1920s. ![]()
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