A historic venue with a divisive past.

The First Great Migration to northern states brought tens of thousands of African-Americans to
New York City, especially Harlem, during the 1920’s. Harlem soon became a nexus for art,
literature, and music. The clubs, speakeasies, and juke joints of Lenox and Seventh Avenues
characterized the nightlife. Places like Smalls’ Paradise, the Lafayette Theatre, Connie’s Inn, and
the Savoy Ballroom attracted Black audiences to their revues, comedy shows, and concerts.
However, it was the famous Cotton Club that attracted curious white patrons. and was THE
place for Cab Calloway’s subtle but indelible influence on American culture began the moment
he forgot the chorus to his own signature song. Picture the scene: The club is packed. Dancers
fill the floor. Calloway steps to the mic and begins that new song he’s been dying to sing. He
reaches the chorus. Something catches his eye. And he can’t remember what comes next.
Always the consummate showman, he improvises with some scat. The crowd joins in. The rest
is history.
That happy accident forever changed “Minnie the Moocher,” and introduced a piece of Black
history to future generations. The “call-and-response,” an intrinsic element of African culture,
was brought to America during the slave trade. Field workers incorporated call-and-response
into their work songs, to set the pace of labor, but also as covert communication. It became a
potent form of resistance, picked up again during the marches of the Civil Rights movement.
Of great pride to Calloway was “Minnie the Moocher’s” legacy for breaking the color barrier.
Over a million copies were sold upon release and was played on both black and white radio
stations. The story of a down-and-out opium addict, it seems, has universal appeal.
Calloway led what was arguably the most popular big band of the Harlem Renaissance and into
the Swing Era. He replaced Duke Ellington as the headliner of the Cotton Club. The fact that his
all-Black orchestra could play the Cotton Club but not enter as guests was not lost on him. As if
in response, he took his band on the road, leading a successful all-Black revue through the deep
South.

Music: Cab Calloway singin’ about “Poor Min” in his immortal “Minnie the Moocher”

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“I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on.” 

Freda Josephine McDonald Baker was born and raised in the slums of St. Louis. After a successful audition at a local vaudeville theater, she left home at the age of 13, working as a waitress and working on the stage whenever she could. She caught her big break while dancing in the chorus for Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake‘s all-Black revue Shuffle Along. A frenetic dancer and relentless on-stage clown, she quickly attracted notice and was tapped for a bigger part in another Sissle/Blake production, 1924’s Chocolate Dandies. The show made her a star in New York and she became big in Harlem as well with performances at The Cotton Club and The Plantation Club. In 1925, she moved to Paris with the American production La Revue Nègre. Baker’s exotic dancing, uninhibited sexuality, and negligible attire — which included a skirt of feathers” — suited the Continent much more than America. “I wasn’t really naked,” she explained, “I simply didn’t have any clothes on.” She became an overnight sensation. and soon opened her own club (Chez Josephine) and starred in her first movie, the naturally exotic 1927 film La Sirene des Tropiques.

She returned to America in 1936 to star in Ziegfeld’s Follies with Bob Hope and Fanny Brice. However, Baker was subjected to a double dose of discrimination: cultural conservatives railed against the show’s promiscuity, while many hotels and restaurants refused entrance to the star of the show. Returning to Paris, she became a naturalized French citizen after marrying sugar magnate Jean Lion, though his status as a French Jew exposed the couple to additional discrimination when the Nazis invaded two years later.

Baker joined the French Resistance at an early date and worked throughout World War II to help the Allies, acting as a funnel to get important documents out of France several times, as a sub-lieutenant in the French Air Force’s Women’s Auxiliary, volunteering for the Red Cross to assist Belgian refugees streaming into France, and boosting troop morale by performing across Northern Africa. Baker earned several commendations including the Medal of Resistance and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

After the war, she worked the cabaret circuit in Paris for several years before performing in Cuba and returning to America yet again. During the early ’50s, Baker’s fight to spread the gospel of Civil Rights made headlines when she performed to integrated audiences at a nightclub in Miami and canceled an Atlanta performance after being refused admission to a hotel. 

She participated in the 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington and gave a series of four concerts at Carnegie Hall to raise funds for the cause. After suffering a heart attack in 1964, however, her performance career practically ended, except for a brief comeback just before her death from a stroke in 1975.

Music: Josephine Baker from 1926, singing “La Vie en Rose”

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