Quote

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

Josephine Baker

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Terror
United
Away
States
Louis
Ran
Discrimination

More quotes by Josephine Baker

Image
I remember when Lindbergh arrived in Paris, I was one of the first persons to know about his landing, because as the French people know that I was born in St. Louis, thinking I would be very proud to announce it to the public, they gave me the news first. I was then starring in the 'Folies Bergere.'
Josephine Baker
Image
Art is an elastic sort of love.
Josephine Baker
Image
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
Image
I was learning the importance of names - having them, making them - but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace.
Josephine Baker
Image
Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.
Josephine Baker
Image
My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world.
Josephine Baker
Image
He was my cream, and I was his coffee - And when you poured us together, it was something.
Josephine Baker
Image
You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
Josephine Baker
Image
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
Image
To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.
Josephine Baker
Image
I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.
Josephine Baker
Image
The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.
Josephine Baker
Image
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
Image
...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
Josephine Baker
Image
I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.
Josephine Baker
Image
I have two loves: my country and Paris.
Josephine Baker
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Josephine Baker
Image
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