She was sent "up the river," so to speak, to a reform school for girls in Hudson, N.Y., where conditions were harsh and punitive, to say the least. She ran numbers for gangsters and served as a lookout for a bordello until the police caught up with her. In adolescence, Fitzgerald was restless and often truant from school. Fitzgerald never specified what kind of abuse she endured, but it was so bad that she ran away to live with her Aunt Virginia in Harlem. ![]() By all accounts, Fitzgerald was a happy child, a tomboy who loved to dance and play stickball in the streets with the boys.īut in 1932, when she was 15, the outgoing girl drew into herself after her mother died, leaving her behind with an abusive stepfather. ![]() When Fitzgerald was 6, her mother got married, and the family moved to Yonkers, N.Y., where Fitzgerald's half-sister Frances was born.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |