STEVENSON: Imagine being greeted here with, I won't say open arms, but being a person. It was horrible when they went home. In many cases, the Ku Klux Klan took great pride in lynching a black man if he had on a uniform.
BEARDSLEY: So many American blacks stayed, says Stevenson, and others followed. Black American culture took off in France between the wars.
(SOUNDBITE OF A SONG)
JOSEPHINE BAKER: (Singing in foreign language)
BEARDSLEY: The French discovered African-American music. And club owners fought to get black bands in what became the leading edge of the Jazz Age. Daughter of a St. Louis housemaid, Josephine Baker moved to France in 1925. She became a star attraction on the Paris nightclub scene and was awarded the French Legion of Honor Medal for fighting in the Resistance in World War II. Baker came back to speak at the 1963 March on Washington and told the crowd she never feared in France, like she did in her own country.
My point was that different folks viewed African Americans in different ways, it wasn't universally negative. Africans in particular did not immigrate to America with hatred for African Americans.
