← Back to the front page

Women of Peace and Those Sided the Wrong of World War II

Khalid Elhassan November 20, 2020 32 min

World War II - Italian resistance movement — Women of the resistance in Italy. Wall Street Journal

25. The Highest Paid Chorus Girl in Vaudeville!

Josephine Baker’s rise coincided with the Harlem Renaissance – an artistic, social, and intellectual explosion centered in Harlem, NY, during the 1920s. Unfortunately, her early comic career revolved around blackface performances in NY clubs – a demeaning form of entertainment of which her mother disapproved.

Her comic dance routines often called for her to bumble and stumble through her act, as if she was a ditz who didn’t know what she was doing. Then, during the encore, she would close out by performing the routine correctly, and with added layers of complexity exceeding those of all other dancers. It was such a hit, that Baker was billed as “The Highest Paid Chorus Girl in Vaudeville!“

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.