After that…there was nothing left for me in America. What little there was left, he ruined for me. I cannot understand why….

You see, if that had not happened when it did, I would then have had what I am having now; and my problems would never have come about. Walter Winchell is totally responsible for the most disastrous twenty years of my life….

When he started his campaign against me, the others picked it up too. Imagine, even people in the government. How in the world can those things ever happen? They read his column and believed what he was saying—without investigating, mind you—and tehn moved to keep me out of the country—which they did, too.

Josephine Baker as cited in Stephen Papich, Remembering Josephine (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1976).