Josephine Baker’s Birthday

On this day in 1906, Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri and christened Freda Josephine McDonald by her mother, Carrie McDonald.  Homeless at the age of 12, she was discovered dancing on a street corner three years later and recruited to join the St. Louis Chorus.  She is perhaps best remembered for her performances at the Folies Bergères in Paris throughout the 1920s where she danced in her iconic banana skirt and often appeared on stage with her pet cheetah, Chiquita.  Through the 1930s, she rose to fame as a singer, dancer, and actress.  In 1937 she became a French citizen, and as World War II progressed, she shifted her focus toward supporting the underground resistance movement.  After the war, she often returned to the United States where she was active in the American Civil Right Movement, speaking at the 1963 March on Washington and famously refusing to perform before segregated audiences.

Josephine Baker with the Nobel Prize winning political scientist, Ralph J. Bunche, ca. 1960. Image courtesy of the UCLA Special Collections via Calisphere, the Online Archive of California.

You can find more primary sources about activists and entertainers of the twentieth century through Opening History.

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Margaret Sanger’s Birthday

On this day in 1879, birth control activist Margaret Sanger was born in Corning, New York.  Sanger (née Higgens) was  the sixth of eleven children, and her mother’s poor health and early death, due in part to her 18 pregnancies, influenced her attitudes toward childbirth and women’s health.  In 1912, Sanger began working as a nurse with poor women on the East Side of Manhattan who were suffering from multiple childbirths and self-induced abortions, and, as a result of these experiences, Sanger soon gave up nursing and devoted her life to advocacy for family planning and sex education.  In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood, and she worked tirelessly throughout her life to promote its mission by establishing clinics, embarking on speaking tours, and disseminating publications.  When the birth control pill was newly available in the 1960s, Sanger (then in her 80s) was its most outspoken advocate.

Image of Margaret Sanger courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Through Opening History, images of Sanger from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress may be found alongside her many publications, which have been made available through the Women Working, 1800-1930 and Immigration to the United States (1789-1930) collections at Harvard University Library.

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