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Index
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Overview
“She is like Salome, she has seven veils”
1. Paris, October 1925: All Hell Breaks Loose
“She had no shame in front of those crackers”
2. Terror Before the Opening
“Josephine, don’t you jump out that window!”
3. Elvira, Carrie, the Beginnings
“Grandma often talked about slave days”
4. Childhood in St. Louis
“There are no bastards in my family!”
5. Race Riots, and Tumpy Leaves Town
“Oh God, why didn’t you make us all one color?”
6. Josephine Marries at Thirteen
“She cut his head open with a beer bottle”
7. Life on the T.O.B.A. Circuit
“It was going from one dinky theater to another”
8. Josephine Tries Marriage for the Second Time
“She was a little snip, about fifteen years old”
9. On the Road with Shuffle Along
“Some of those girls treated Joe like a dog”
10. You Can Go Home Again, If You Don’t Stay There
“My mother, poor woman, I was ashamed of her”
11. In Bamville, or The Chocolate Dandies
“She’d be laughing, to her the work was joy”
12. Summer of ’25: Heat and Harlem Nights
“She was hanging over Seventh Avenue, stark naked”
13. Mrs. Reagan Comes to Harlem
“I got off at Lenox Avenue. . . . I was happy”
14. A Shipboard Romance, and Hello, Paris
“Men and women kissing in the streets!”
15. Josephine Checks Out Poets, Painters, Waiters
“I wanted to seduce the whole capital”
16. The Good Times Roll
“We need tits”
17. Josephine Betrays a Friend
“She had flown, she had been stolen from me”
18. The Folies-Bergère: Everyone Goes Bananas
“I was manicured, pedicured. . . .”
19. Enter Pepito
“He used to beat the hell out of her”
20. Condemned by Church and State
“They denounced me as the black devil!”
21. Sex and the (Sort Of) Married Woman
“She saw him with his pants off, we didn’t”
22. A Star of the Ziegfeld Follies
“I don’t want to be refused in a hotel”
23. Bad Times in Harlem
“She insisted on speaking only French”
24. Trashed by Critics, Envied by Peers
“My God, how does it feel to be a big star?”
25. Another Husband, More Lovers, and Sex, Sex, Sex
“She knew I was gay but she had to possess you”
26. Josephine Goes to War
“I am ready to give the Parisians my life”
27. Arabian Nights
“As a mistress, she wanted the whole treatment”
28. Rediscovering Her Race
“My people, my people, I have abandoned them!”
29. Josephine, Heroine of the Resistance
“That German cow in my blue satin sheets!”
30. Josephine Dumps a Millionaire for a Bandleader
“I can’t marry Claude, he’s much too jealous”
31. Breaking the Color Bar in Miami
“She wanted to go down in history, like Lincoln”
32. The Feud with Walter Winchell
“She broke my heart, I am a finished man”
33. A Career Collapses, a Universal Mother Is Born
“I want to adopt five little two-year-old boys”
34. Life Is a Cabaret at Les Milandes
“Jo [Bouillon] would seduce young men”
35. More Comebacks, More Babies, More Losses
“In 1959, Josephine Baker was a has-been”
36. Twenty Lawsuits and the Legion of Honor
“I can’t take care of six hundred acres and eleven children”
37. The March on Washington, and the Death of JFK
“I’m not the star, just another sister”
38. Uncle Fidel, and Last Gasps at Les Milandes
“I know God will not abandon me”
39. Down and Almost Out in Paris
“What happened to all that money?”
40. Princess Grace to the Rescue
“I want to be buried in the nightgown of my agony”
41. Maman Is Tough on the Kids . . . and Herself
“At a certain age, one should stop having sex”
42. A Plan to Make Three Million Dollars in America
“She knew how to profit from her friends”
43. Josephine Marries “In Spirit,” and Wrecks a Tour
“Once men get what they want, they keep walking”
44. Josephine Is Sick but Won’t Admit It
“It was her last chance to reconquer Paris”
45. Going Out in a Blaze of Glory
“We always believed she was immortal”
Epilogue: An Open Letter to My Second Mother
“You were a hustler; I’m a hustler too”
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
Index
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