Josh White - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1933, White married a New York gospel singer, Carol Carr. They raised Blondell (Bunny), Julianne (Beverly), Josh Jr., Carolyn (Fern), Judy, and a foster daughter, Delores, in their home in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, New York. White's younger brother Billy (who he moved up from Greenville) and Carol's mother all lived with them in the White household. His father died in a South Carolina mental institution in 1930, the result of beatings at the hands of Greenville deputies a decade earlier. His mother, Daisy Elizabeth, a very stern and religious woman, remained in her hometown of Greenville, South Carolina and lived into her 80s. She came to visit White in New York several times a year and he traveled to see her in South Carolina, but she didn't allow his non-religious recordings in her home. Except for his childhood performances in her Greenville church in the 1920s, she never again saw her son perform, refusing to attend concerts where he sang non-sacred songs. His brother Billy and (future civil rights leader) Bayard Rustin, Sam Gary and Carrington Lewis performed and recorded with White in "Josh White and His Carolinians" (from 1939 to 1940) and appeared with him in the Broadway musical John Henry. After World War II, Billy became Eleanor Roosevelt's house manager and chauffeur for the remainder of her life.

On occasion in the early 1940s, when the grandmother watched the children, Carol would join White in singing, performing and recording with the folk collaborative group, the Almanac Singers. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Carol would appear as a guest on Eleanor Roosevelt's television talk show; and in 1982, she was a featured speaker at the Smithsonian Institution's 100th Anniversary Celebration of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Birth in Washington, while her son, Josh White, Jr., performed a musical program of songs his father had presented at one of his White House Command Performances. Josh White, Jr., a successful singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, educator, and social activist for the past 60 years, performed and recorded with his father as a duet from 1944 to 1961, in addition to performing together with him in two Broadway plays (Josh White, Jr. won a 1949 Tony Award for the play How Long Till Summer). At various times in the 1950s and 1960s, daughters Beverly, Fern, and Judy also performed, recorded and appeared on radio and television with White. In 1964, when new anti-segregationist legislation made it easier for African Americans to purchase real estate in previously all-white neighborhoods, Josh and Carol bought a duplex home in the Rosedale, Queens section of New York City. While daughter Beverly and her family lived upstairs, the couple lived in the downstairs home. White lived in this semi-suburban lifestyle for the remainder of his life, while wife Carol would continue to live there and work into her 80s, first as a clothing boutique manager, and then as a social worker to elderly people in nursing homes, until her sudden passing in 1998. One week before her fatal heart attack, Carol received final confirmation that the United States Postal Service would be honoring White in 1998 with his own postage stamp. When shown a mock-up photograph of the stamp by Josh's estate manager, Douglas Yeager, she expressed joy, gratitude and a long-awaited satisfaction—that after all those painful years of social isolation from the McCarthy era, Josh would finally be receiving the recognition he deserved. She felt that she could finally go now in peace.