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I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.

Josephine Baker

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Josephine Baker
Age: 68 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 3
Died: 1975
Died: April 12
Actor
Dancer
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Model
Singer
Street Artist
Vedette
St. Louis
Missouri
Freda Josephine McDonald
Joséphine Baker
Discrimination
Terror
United
Away
States
Louis
Ran

More quotes by Josephine Baker

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I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.
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The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts.
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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.
Josephine Baker
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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.
Josephine Baker
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He was my cream, and I was his coffee - And when you poured us together, it was something.
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I spent 30 minutes each morning rubbing my body with half a lemon to lighten my skin.
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To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.
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...It looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose if one was held back by one's color? No, I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises. ~ Josephine Baker, once she had seen the Eiffel Tower
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One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.
Josephine Baker
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Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.
Josephine Baker
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Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.
Josephine Baker
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We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.
Josephine Baker
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Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.
Josephine Baker
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I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.
Josephine Baker
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The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.
Josephine Baker
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When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Eventually I ran far away. It was to a place called France. Many of you have been there, and many have not. But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared. It was like a fairyland place.
Josephine Baker
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What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.
Josephine Baker
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One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.
Josephine Baker
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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.
Josephine Baker
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Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.
Josephine Baker