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Early life
Taken from Wikipedia
Kitt was born Eartha Mae Keith on a cotton plantation in Columbia, South Carolina. Her mother was of Cherokee and African-American descent and her father of German and Dutch descent. She also claimed she was conceived by rape.
Kitt was raised by her mother's sister, Anna Mae Riley, an African-American woman whom she believed was her mother. After Riley's death, she was sent to live in New York City with Mamie Kitt, who she learned was her biological mother; she had no knowledge of her father, except that his surname was Kitt and that he was supposedly a son of the owner of the farm she had been born on. Newspaper obituaries state that her white father was "a poor cotton farmer".
Kitt claimed that she suffered abuse and neglect at the hands of a family to whom Anna Mae Riley entrusted her - "given away for slavery," as she described it in many interviews. ^^
Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman said.
She was 81.
Andrew Freedman said Kitt, who was recently treated at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, died in Connecticut of colon cancer.
She lived in Weston in recent years but it was uncertain if that was where she died.Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of America's most versatile performers, winning two "Emmy Awards" and nabbing a third nomination.
She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys.Her career spanned six decades, from her start as a dancer with the famed Katherine Dunham troupe to cabarets and acting and singing on stage, in movies and on television.
She persevered through an unhappy childhood
as a mixed-race daughter of the South.
