📍Yonkers, NY, USA
1920 – 1932“I was born in Newport News, Virginia, in April 1917, and in the early 1920s my mother, Tempie, and her partner, Joseph Da Silva, brought me to Yonkers, just north of New York City. By 1925 we were living on School Street, in a poor, mostly Italian neighbourhood, with my little half-sister, Frances. My mother worked in a laundry and catered, and Joe dug ditches and drove a car. I was a good student, and in 1929 I started at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School. What I really loved was dancing. From third grade I danced everywhere, on street corners and at parties, and I idolised Earl Snakehips Tucker; I wanted to be a dancer. I listened to my mother's records of the Boswell Sisters and loved Connee Boswell's singing. We were poor, and I helped out by running numbers and as a lookout, and I sang and danced on the street for coins. In 1932, when I was fifteen, my mother died in a car accident, and everything fell apart. I was sent to an orphanage and then to a reform school near Albany, and when I ran away, I ended up alone in Harlem. In November 1934, at seventeen, I went on stage at an Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater, planning to dance, but the dancers before me were so good that I sang instead, Judy and The Object of My Affection, and I won first prize. Chick Webb hired me for his orchestra, and I became the First Lady of Song. Yonkers has honoured me with a statue at its railway station, close to where I grew up.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today