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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

33. She Had a Fraught Relationship With Her Mother

Baker had a tempestuous relationship with her mother. Carrie McDonald had tried her hand as an entertainer, and having experienced its struggles and seediness, and ended up in dire poverty at the end of it all, she decided that nothing good could come of showbiz. So she constantly badgered and berated her daughter for trying to make a career as an entertainer. She also scolded Baker for neglecting her second husband, Willie Baker, whom she had married in 1921 at age 15. Things got worse between mother and daughter when Baker ditched her husband to go on tour, before eventually divorcing him in 1925. The fact the Baker proved her mother wrong when her career took off, only worsened matters.

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.