Josephine Baker Quotes
When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Eventually I ran far away. It was to a place called France. Many of you have been there, and many have not. But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared. It was like a fairyland place.
Baker, Josephine. "Speech at the March on Washington." 28 Aug. 1963, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. Address.
This is the origin of the description of America as the “asylum for mankind.” The word in this context indicates a place of safety and refuge.
Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. Born near Damascus in Syria, grandson of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik,Abd al Rahman was the son of the Umayyad prince Mu'awiya ibn Hisham and a Berber mother. He was twenty when his family, the ruling Umayyads, were overthrown by a popular revolt known as the Abbasid Revolution, occurring in the year 750. Abd al-Rahman and a small selection of his family fled Damascus with assassins chasing him. He ended up running to Spain, and there built his incredibly successful dynasty.
Josephine Baker was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant.
