Zaidee Jackson

Zaidee Jackson was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1898 to Alice and C.J. Jackson, both sharecroppers. In 1923, she first danced as a chorus girl with the Lafayette Players. She eventually made her way to Paris in 1927. She rose to significance, while touring England in 1928, where she sang on the BBC and performed at the Cafe Anglais. Despite a growing popularity in London, she returned to Paris, appearing at the Chez Zelli's, Sheherazade, Chez Florence and dancing nude at Chez Les Nudistes in 1933. In France, Egypt, Monte Carlo, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and all over Europe, she had sung in the finest cabarets, hotels and theaters and appeared in three motion pictures. She had been the favorite of the international set, such as Elsa Maxwell and Prince Henry, the Duke of Kent.

In 1937, while running a club in Monte Carlo, she met and married Romanian engineer and race car driver, Barbu Neamtu, and returned with him to Romania, where she became a popular attraction at the exclusive La Zissu Cabaret in Bucharest throughout the late '30s and '40s. In 1951, while performing in Romania during the Communist Era, she was accused of being a Communist and her American passport was revoked. She occasionally had difficulty in Romania, discrimination from the nightclub owners, her estate in the countryside was seized by the government as National Property and her husband was arrested by the Romanian secret police and thrown into a labor camp. After separating from her husband and with the help of her family and President Eisenhower, she gained American citizenship in 1956, when she returned to performing in the United States.

She died on December 15, 1970, and is buried in Waterbury, Connecticut.

Sources: Blacks in Europe Blogspot; IMD, by A. J.