Katherine Dunham - Early Years

Early Years

Katherine Mary Dunham was born in June, 1909 in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a village about fifteen miles west of Chicago. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Katherine was four years old. After her father's remarriage a few years later, the family moved to a predominately white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois, where Mr. Dunham ran a dry cleaning business.

Katherine became interested in both writing and dance at a young age, displaying talent in both fields. In high school she joined the Terpsichorean Club and began to learn a kind of modern dance based on ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban. At the age of 15, she organized the Blue Moon Café, a fund-raising cabaret for Brown's Methodist Church in Joliet, where she gave her first public performance. While still a high-school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children.