3/6/2023 0 Comments Macombo lounge dc shooting![]() ![]() Fitzgerald was a fan of Connee Boswell, whose lithe style left a deep impression. ![]() She remembered the records her mother used to play, songs by the Boswell Sisters. She initially wanted to dance but, intimidated by the fancy footwork of the Edwards Sisters, decided to sing instead. Two winters later, while taking in a performance of a dancing duo called the Edwards Sisters at the Apollo Theater, Fitzgerald decided to stick around afterward to compete in the amateur hour. The 15-year-old Fitzgerald ran away from the reform school and, for a time, was homeless on the streets of New York City during the Great Depression. Fitzgerald and the others were routinely beaten by a male staff. She was sent "up the river," so to speak, to a reform school for girls in Hudson, N.Y., where conditions were harsh and punitive, to say the least. She ran numbers for gangsters and served as a lookout for a bordello until the police caught up with her. In adolescence, Fitzgerald was restless and often truant from school. Fitzgerald never specified what kind of abuse she endured, but it was so bad that she ran away to live with her Aunt Virginia in Harlem. By all accounts, Fitzgerald was a happy child, a tomboy who loved to dance and play stickball in the streets with the boys.īut in 1932, when she was 15, the outgoing girl drew into herself after her mother died, leaving her behind with an abusive stepfather. When Fitzgerald was 6, her mother got married, and the family moved to Yonkers, N.Y., where Fitzgerald's half-sister Frances was born.
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