They finally allowed Kitt to see them, but…only for 15 minutes. The pair flew down. “She was very nervous and outside the judge’s chambers she went quiet. She was visibly nervous about what she was going to see… It was a female judge who stepped aside while we read the records on her desk. The father’s name was blacked out. My mother shed a few tears and then the 15 minutes was up,” says Shapiro, who worked for her mother for more than 20 years.
On that day it was also revealed Kitt had never known her birth date. While she has always put January 26 1926 on her passport, the certificate revealed she was actually a year younger, born January 17 1927.
Shapiro says her mother never really felt comfortable in her own skin because she never really knew who she was until then. She believes that this failure to find out her mother’s origins explains her tortured relationship with the South and her own identity.
Eartha Kitt passed away on Christmas Day 2008, never knowing her father’s name. Eartha’s parentage was uncertain. Her father was white – but who was he? Possibly one of the Kitt family, ‘the former slave owners,’ or a recently bereaved local doctor called Daniel Sturkie.
Eartha may have died still longing to know who her father was, but she never let that void block her sheer determination to become great and boy, did she succeed at that! Eartha may have not been loved by her father, nor her mother, but she definitely had the unconditional love she deserved once and for all through her children and grandchildren who adored her.
