A biography for Josephine Bakerhasn’t been written yet.
“The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling because when I was a little girl I remember the horror of the East St. Louis race riot.”
“The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.”
“You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.”
“I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.”
“Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.”