Katherine Dunham Research Paper

Born June 22, 1909, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, near Chicago, Dunham enjoyed the security of a middle-class suburban existence for the first four years of her life. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a tailor who had his own business in Chicago. Her mother, Fanny June Guillaume Taylor, who was twenty years older than her husband, was an assistant principal at a city school. Dunham's life changed drastically though, in 1914, when her mother became seriously ill and died, leaving Albert to raise Katherine and her older brother, Albert Jr, alone. Eventually, financial obligations forced Katherine's father to sell the family's home, sacrifice his business, and accept a job as a traveling salesman. Over the next few years, Katherine and Albert Jr, stayed with their aunt Lulu Dunham and various relatives in sections of Chicago. They stayed first with cousins Clara Dunham and her 17-year-old daughter. Both were actresses, and lived in an apartment that was also used as a rehearsal space for a black vaudeville show, which they were producing. Later, they moved in with another cousin, who took Katherine to shows at the local theaters, where she delighted in the
Fighting segregation in hotels, restaurants and theaters, she filed lawsuits and made public condemnations. In Hollywood, she refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members to an enthusiastic but all-white audience in the South, she made an after-performance speech, saying she could never play there again until it was integrated. In São Paulo, Brazil, she brought a discrimination suit against a hotel, eventually prompting the president of Brazil to apologize to her and to pass a law that forbade discrimination in public places. In 1951 Dunham premiered "Southland," an hour-long ballet about lynching, which was only performed in Chile and