← Back to the front page

40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

Khalid Elhassan July 2, 2019 24 min

Josephine Baker - Josephine Baker - Chanter L'amour

36. She Had to Quit School And Live On the Streets

Growing up in such conditions, the young girl’s schooling was spotty, and her education was put on the back burner. Eventually, Baker was forced to drop out of school altogether at age 12, having progressed only to fifth grade. For a while, she lived as a street kid in St. Louis’ slums, sleeping in cardboard boxes, scavenging food from trash cans, and earning a bit of money every now and then by dancing on street corners. Things stabilized a bit when she got a job, at age 13, as a full time waitress. While waiting tables, she met and married a man named Willie Wells, but things quickly soured between the duo, and she got a divorce.

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.