josephine profile picture

josephine

I'm like a box, I have sides...

About Me

I was born in a poor, Black slum in East St. Louis, Illinois, on June 3, 1906, to 21-year-old Carrie MacDonald. My mother hoped to be a music hall dancer; meanwhile, I was forced to take in laundry. I am was of mixed ethnic background: Indian/Negro (as they would say in 1906) or Native American/African American (as we would say today). I am descended from Apalachee Indians and Black slaves in South Carolina. Olive-skinned Eddie Carson, my father, was a vaudeville drummer and I did not visit with him much.
At the age of eight I was hired out to a white woman as a maid; I was forced to sleep in the coal cellar with a pet dog and was scalded on the hands when I used too much soap in the laundry. * At the age of ten I returned, thankfully, to school. I remember thinking that there is no Santa Claus. I'm Santa Claus. I witnessed the cruel East St. Louis race riot of 1917. It was then that I moved from the St. Louis area at the age of 13 and emigrated out of the United States at 19. "That such a childhood produced an expatriate is not surprising," Phyllis Rose, one of my biographers once commented. * Because I was born in a cold city, because I felt cold throughout my childhood ... I always wanted to dance on the stage. I was determined to be a stage dancer. * After my sucess in France, I returned in August 1963 to attend the civil rights march in Washington, D.C. In October of that year I made a trip to Manhattan to sing, dance, and "fight bias". The reason I stayed away from America for soo long was because I more than once looked back to my childhood in America disconsolately. I was in a bind which many find themselves in: bound to one country, America, but in love with another, France. I could never forgive the United States for its racism. But President John F. Kennedy made a difference to American and it was because of the civil rights movement I returened to my homeland.

My Interests

I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed....if you knew me in another life we might have been friends.I was a star of stage, screen and recordings, a civil rights activist and an honored military woman during World War II. I adopted 12 children of different races, whom I've called the "Rainbow Tribe"; 2 girls and 10 boys. I sought to prove that "children of different ethnicities and religions could be brothers". My stardom lasted for 50 years; my fans gave me extravagant gifts such as diamonds and cars, and I received over 1,500 marriage proposals...."[The Eiffel Tower] looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty?"

I'd like to meet:

someone with interests beyond their own backyard...and people not from the states...
My World Visitor Map!

Music:

Ella.Fitzgerald...Duke...Armstrong...Parker...E.Hawkins& C.Hawkins...Lunceford...Hoilday...Bassie...Elderidge...Gille spie...Mingus...Calloway...Coltrane...Davis (before "cool" west coast jazz that occured in 1957)...Nina Simone...Taj Mahal...tbc (to be con't)

Movies:

Casablanca...The Maltese Falcon...Mr. smith goes to washington...Citizen Kane...Vertigo...Gone with the Wind...The way we were...Nosferatu...On the Waterfront...more to come...

Television:

ummm, tele...what? what ever this invention is, it probably won't last for long!!!

Books:

Ernest Hemingway (who thought I was "the most beautiful woman there is, there ever was, or ever will be," in hyperbole),Georges Roualt

Heroes:

Picasso, Le Corbusier

My Blog

Calling all international Hot Boys and Girls

Hey fellow myspacers our international club needs help...spread the word. we want to establish relationship ties across large bodies of water with people who are interesting, cute, and have fun a...
Posted by josephine on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST