Saint-Louis

(Missouri)

 

Carrie McDonald, (1885-1959), fille de Richard McDonald et d'Elvira McDonald.

 

Aux Milandes…

Eddie Carson, mort le 30 août 1965, à 79 ans.

Josephine Baker was born in 1906 in Sublette Park. The building was razed in 1915. The land where the Social Evil Hospital once stood is now called «  Sublet Park ».

« As a child in St. Louis, Josephine Baker rummaged for coal behind Union Station and for food behind Soulard Market. At age 13 she waitressed at the Chauffeurs’ Club on Pine Street and danced with a minstrel band. »

Source : The St. Louis Walk of Fame — a nonprofit organization founded in 1988 to provide a showcase for the cultural heritage of St. Louis

Entouré bleu, le « bloc » où Joséphine et sa famille vécurent, à Mill Creek Valley, quartier qui fut détruit dans les années 1960.

Source : https://www.theclio.com/tour/1376/1

 

Saint-Louis au tout début du XXe siècle.

Sous la plume d'un certain Alex Carnevale (journaliste, semble-t-il), en 2017, quelques détails intéressants sur ses origines : « Before he permanently disappeared from her life, Josephine Baker's white father did her one favor. He paid for her mother Carrie to receive six weeks of treatment in a white hospital in St. Louis. Josephine Baker's given name, Freda, was German and so, probably, was her father. Three letters on her birth certificate testified to his identity, letters she would not see until the document had to be procured when she left the United States. » Son père était donc Allemand.

Et Alex Carnevale de poursuivre : « When she was five, Josephine Baker's mother was finally ready to take her and her brother Richard into her own home. They called their mother's new husband Papa. The poorest neighborhoods in St. Louis were composed largely of Russian Jews, Italians or blacks. Josephine and Richard slept with Carrie's two other children on one mattress, riddled with bedbugs. For food they raided the trash of a local outdoor market. Odd jobs occasionally made them a dime. With her brother, she tossed coal to the rest of the kids from freight cars. […] » Quatre enfants donc au total.

J. B. revint plusieurs fois à Saint-Louis, pour voir sa mère. En 1951, elle refusa de s'y produire, au Chase Hotel, pour un salaire de 12 000 $, car la salle était interdite aux Noirs.

She appeared at Kiel in 1952 on behalf of the Citizens Protest Committee on Overcrowding in the Negro Public Schools, a local group raising money to fight segregation. Baker entertained an integrated audience of about 8,000 people for two hours, then let her hometown have it.

The Griot Museum of Black History,

Saint-Louis, Missouri.

J. B. was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame on May 20, 1990

Le St. Louis Walk of Fame rend hommage aux personnalités de St. Louis, Missouri, qui ont contribué à la culture des États-Unis.

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