Katherine Dunham - Private Life

Private Life

Dunham married Jordis McCoo, a black postal worker, in 1931, but he did not share her interests and they gradually drifted apart, finally divorcing in 1938. About that time Dunham met and began to work with John Thomas Pratt, a Canadian who had become one of America's most renowned costume and theatrical set designers. Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures and was happy to put his talents in her service. After he became her artistic collaborator, they became romantically involved, despite the difference in their races. In the summer of 1941, after the national tour of Cabin in the Sky ended, they went to Mexico, where inter-racial marriages were less controversial than in the United States, and engaged in a commitment ceremony on 20 July, which thereafter they gave as the date of their wedding. In fact, that ceremony was not recognized as a legal marriage in the United States, a point of law that would come to trouble them some years later. In any case, from the beginning of their association, around 1938, Pratt designed every costume Dunham ever wore. He continued as her artistic collaborator and manager of her career until his death in 1986.

When she was not performing, Dunham and Pratt often visited Haiti for extended stays. On one of these visits during the late 1940s she purchased a large property of more than seven hectares in the Carrefours suburban area of Port-au-Prince. Reputed to have once belonged to General Charles Leclerc, husband of Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, it was known as Habitation Leclerc and was famous for its tropical forest and flowing spring, a major source of drinking water for the city and a sacred site in the Vodun religion. Dunham used Habitation Leclerc as a private retreat for many years, frequently bringing members of her dance company to recuperate from the stress of touring and to work on developing new dance productions. After running it as a tourist spot, with Vodun dancing as entertainment, in the early 1960s, she sold it to a French entrepreneur in the early 1970s. There was once talk of turning Habitation Leclerc into a botantical garden named in honor of Dunham, but all such hopes were abandoned when the property was virtually destroyed by the great earthquake of 2010.

In 1949 Dunham returned from international touring with her company for a brief stay in the United States, where she suffered a temporary nervous breakdown after the premature death of her beloved brother Albert. He had been a promising philosophy professor at Howard University and a protégé of Alfred North Whitehead. During this time, she developed a warm friendship with famous psychologist and humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm, whom she had known in Europe. He was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends. In December 1951, a photo of Dunham dancing with Ismaili Muslim leader Prince Ali Khan at a private party he had hosted for her in Paris appeared in a popular magazine and fueled rumors that the two were romantically linked. Both Dunham and the prince denied the suggestion. The prince was then married to glamorous Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth, and Dunham was, at long last, legally married to John Pratt, having wedded him in a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas earlier in the year. The couple had then officially adopted their foster daughter, a four-year-old girl they had found as an infant in a Roman Catholic convent nursery in Fresnes, France. Named Marie-Christine Dunham Pratt, she was their only child.

Among Dunham's closest friends and colleagues was Julie Robinson, formerly a performer with the Katherine Dunham Company, and her husband, singer and later political activist Harry Belafonte. Both remained close friends of Dunham for many years, until her death. Glory Van Scott and Jean-Léon Destiné were among other former Dunham dancers who remained her lifelong friends.