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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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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
Men
Eyes
Represented
Friends
Negro
Eye
Humiliation
White
Terror
Fear
Misery
Place
City
Better
Stay
Years
Cities
Louis

More quotes by Josephine Baker

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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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The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts.
Josephine Baker
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He was my cream, and I was his coffee - And when you poured us together, it was something.
Josephine Baker
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I spent 30 minutes each morning rubbing my body with half a lemon to lighten my skin.
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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Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Josephine Baker
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One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.
Josephine Baker
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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
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All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.
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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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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Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.
Josephine Baker
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To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.
Josephine Baker
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Art is an elastic sort of love.
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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...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
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I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.
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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The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.
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