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40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

Khalid Elhassan July 2, 2019 24 min

Josephine Baker - Josephine Baker - Chanter L'amour

39. She First Appeared on Stage as a Baby

Early African American vaudeville performers. The Bluegrass Situation

Carrie McDonald and Eddie Carson, Josephine Baker’s mother and nominal father, were vaudeville performers who had a song-and-dance act that they put on whenever possible. When Josephine was a year old, her parents began incorporating her into their performance, and displayed her on stage during their act’s finale. Being on stage as a baby was an augury of things to come. Baker remained immersed in show business during her childhood, growing up in a neighborhood that housed many vaudeville theaters and entertainment venues.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.