She was born on a cotton plantation in South Carolina in 1927. She had no birth certificate. She did not know her father's name. By age 3, her own mother had abandoned her. And by 1963, she was the most exciting woman in the world crouched on a concrete floor in Australia, trying to teach her 23-month-old daughter that life holds nothing to fear.
That little girl in the red tights is Kitt McDonald. Her mother is Eartha Kitt.
And this photo, shot on Kodachrome film, captures something most people never knew existed a woman of extraordinary tenderness, behind one of the most ferocious lives ever lived.
Let's start at the beginning.
Eartha Mae Keith was born on January 17, 1927, in a tiny town called North, in Orangeburg County, South Carolina. Her mother was of Black and Cherokee heritage. Her father was believed to be a white plantation owner a name South Carolina authorities reportedly protected well into the 21st century.
She never knew who he was.
At around 3 years old, her mother abandoned her. She was sent to live with a neighbor. That neighbor treated her like a servant, punished her for eating too much, and allowed abuse in that household that no child should ever endure. Then, at around age 7, she was sent to live with an aunt in Harlem, New York. That home was no safer.
She described herself simply: "Just a poor cotton picker from the South."
Here's what makes her story extraordinary.
From those beginnings no family, no name, no protection she built herself into something the world had never seen. She taught herself to dance. She caught the eye of legendary choreographer Katherine Dunham in 1945 at age 18. She toured Europe with Dunham's dance company. She learned to speak 4 languages fluently: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Orson Welles cast her in a Paris stage production in 1950 and called her "the most exciting woman in the world."
By 1953, at age 26, she had 2 recordings that became timeless classics: "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty hit "Santa Baby." Both are still played everywhere, more than 70 years later.
On June 9, 1960, she married real estate investor John William McDonald. On November 26, 1961, their daughter Kitt McDonald was born in Los Angeles. Eartha refused to leave her daughter behind during tours. She brought Kitt everywhere across continents, across time zones, into every dressing room and every foreign city.
That is how a 36-year-old global star ends up crouched on a floor in Australia in 1963, showing a baby kangaroo to a 23-month-old girl with windswept blonde hair.
But here's what was quietly building behind that smile.
January 18, 1968. Eartha Kitt is invited to a White House luncheon by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. The subject is juvenile delinquency. Eartha has been working with a youth nonprofit called "Rebels with a Cause" in Washington D.C. She is there as an activist and a voice.
When it comes time to speak, she stands up and looks directly at Lady Bird Johnson.
"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," she says. "They rebel in the streets. They will take pot and they will get high. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."
The room goes silent. Completely silent.
President Johnson is furious. The CIA opens a file on Eartha Kitt. The dossier fills with fabricated accusations. At the bottom of the file, according to Eartha herself, it reads: "Specifically requested by Lady Bird and President Johnson."
She later told Whoopi Goldberg that the Johnsons contacted television networks and media across the nation and said they did not want to see her face on their screens.
She was 41 years old. Her career in America was destroyed overnight.
No car was sent to take her home from the White House that day. She had arrived by limousine. She left by taxi.
For nearly a decade, she worked almost exclusively in Europe. Club owners in America told her: "You're a problem." She kept performing. She kept touring. She brought her daughter Kitt along.
In 1975, 7 years after the luncheon, the New York Times revealed that the CIA had secretly compiled a surveillance report on Eartha Kitt following that lunch. The truth finally reached the public. Outrage followed.
She was welcomed back.
She went on to win a Tony Award for her Broadway role in Timbuktu! in 1978. She voiced Yzma in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove in 2000. She won 2 Daytime Emmy Awards. She worked until the very end of her life, performing and recording into her 80s while battling colon cancer.
She died on Christmas Day, December 25, 2008, at age 81, at her home in Connecticut. Her daughter Kitt was by her side.
That little girl in Australia grew up to write a memoir titled Eartha & Kitt: A Daughter's Love Story in Black and White. In it, she described 3 decades of traveling the world alongside her mother. Every dressing room. Every foreign city. Every stage.
Eartha Kitt once said: "I don't think there is anything I have done that I wish I hadn't done. Because I learn from everything I do. I'm in school every day. My diploma will be my tombstone."
A girl abandoned at age 3 with nothing. A woman who stood in the White House and told the most powerful people in the world the truth. A mother who crouched on a concrete floor in Australia in 1963, showing her daughter a kangaroo, teaching her there is nothing to fear.
Share this with someone who needs to know the most powerful thing a person can do is refuse to be silent, no matter the cost.
Comments
Post a Comment