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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
