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Josephine Baker

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:4,000.00 - 5,000.00 USD
Josephine Baker

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Auction Date:2018 Jun 13 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Fascinating archive of six autograph letters by Baker (partly signed), totaling 28 pages, dated from October–November 1963. This interesting correspondence dates to her 1963 tour of the United States, and she comments on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as well as the deaths of Edith Piaf and Jean Cocteau. She discusses her arrival in New York in October, and notes that she seeks to contact Stephen Papich, later her biographer, to help in a fight against racial discrimination. Noting the deaths of French legends, she adds (translated): "I suppose you sent the flowers for poor Piaf ??and Cocteau."

Baker goes on to say that the critics are excellent, but that she needs immediate cashflow and her engagements were not scheduled until mid-November. She does her accounts and gives instructions for her business, her future contracts, and settles her financial troubles. She wants to save time, "because although we won the battle completely here the whole of America is at our feet as before it takes time to have institutions because the success came at once…The US is in our pocket again, and we must keep it because this is the money, and without limit."

On November 24th, she writes of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and "then, the assassination of the murderer." She was in Washington for the burial: "There is 1 month of national mourning," which postpones her show to December 27th at best. In overall fine condition. Accompanied by five original mailing envelopes and a letter from Jacques Abtey.