The 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, Radio GoGaGa, Josephine Baker: linked by the amazing web mesh

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One of the most fascinating attributes of the web is the way seemingly disjointed pieces of information appear to form a net.

On Feb 22, I mentioned an articled titled Blacklash? by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about the similarities of the African-American struggle and the gay struggle for civil rights. His article was written in 1993 prior to the April 23, "1993 March on Washington for Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Rights and Liberation." Which he compares with the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. (Different sources disagree on the exact name.)

As I've mentioned before, I've been backtracking through the previous journal entries in the tedious task of trying to achieve a similar look and feel to the pages. It so happened that I was working on the page for journal - 2000-0106 - thu 1900. In the entry, I mentioned that I'd just begun to experiment with Real Audio and was listening on a frequent bases to Radio GoGaGa which offered up one the most eclectic mixes available. In fact I indicated that I'd heard a song by Josephine Baker. Possibly the one and only time I've hear her outside of a couple of TV production. (I have no idea what happened to Radio GoGaGa, one day it gone.)

I was trying to remember when I had first heard of Josephine. I'd heard the name but knew few details about her until I read Janet Flanner's "Paris Was Yesterday - 1925 - 1939". Flanner wrote a periodic column called "Letters from Paris" for "The New Yorker" under the pen name "Genêt."

As I was doing my updating last week, I thought I'd glance at what Wikipedia - Josephine Baker had to say. And there among the verbiage under the subtitle "Civil rights involvement" was the following:

["In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [3] Wearing her Free French uniform with her Legion of Honor decoration, she was the only woman to speak at the rally. [4]"]

There's a documentary of her life from 1986 called "Chasing a Rainbow: The Life of Josephine Baker" that was on A&E several years later. The initial footage is of the day of her funeral. It appeared that all of Paris had come to a standstill. There were thousands and thousands of Parisians along the route of the funeral cortège. What a great tribute to one of the world's unigue entertainers whose career spanned almost 60 years.

PAX! Erin Go Braugh!