EARTHA KITT
Mixed (African American and Cherokee Native American)
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Eartha Kitt — heritage & background
Quick answer: Eartha Kitt was of African American and Cherokee Native American descent through her mother, Annie Mae Keith, who was of both African and Cherokee heritage. Her father's identity was never publicly established with certainty — most accounts suggest he was a white man, possibly the son of the plantation owner on whose land Eartha was born in South Carolina. Kitt died on December 25, 2008, at age 81.
Was Eartha Kitt Black? Was She Mixed Race?
Eartha Kitt was of mixed racial heritage, though she lived and was identified publicly as a Black woman throughout her life. Her mother, Annie Mae Keith, was of Cherokee and African descent — herself a woman of mixed Native American and African American heritage. Her father's identity was never formally established during Eartha's lifetime.
Most biographical accounts and historical research suggest that Eartha's father was white — reportedly the son of the plantation owner on whose land she was born in rural South Carolina. This was described as the result of a rape. This background, if accurate, would make Eartha Kitt triracially mixed: African American, Cherokee Native American, and white European American.
However, Eartha's publicly lived identity was as a Black woman. She grew up in Black households, was raised by Black relatives, and spent her formative years in the African American community in Harlem, New York. Her olive complexion and ambiguous appearance were a source of childhood pain — she was rejected by her mother partly because of her relatively light skin — but she never publicly claimed or sought to claim a white identity.
What Was Eartha Kitt's Ethnicity?
Eartha Mae Keith was born on January 17, 1927, in North, a small town in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, located in a region that had been defined for generations by its cotton plantations, sharecropping economy, and deeply entrenched racial hierarchies.
Her mother, Annie Mae Keith (later Riley), was a sharecropper of African American and Cherokee Native American descent — a combination reflecting the complex intertwining of African and Indigenous American histories in the South. The Cherokee people had a significant historical presence in the Carolinas before the forced removal of the Trail of Tears (1838–1839), and many Cherokee individuals and families remained in the South Carolina region, mixing with African American communities over generations.
Eartha was born out of wedlock. Her mother's relationship with her father — a man who, according to most accounts, was white and of higher social standing — reflected the brutal power dynamics of the Jim Crow South, where such relationships were often coercive or outright violent. Eartha was conceived, according to most sources, by rape.
When Eartha was approximately three or four years old, her mother went to live with a Black man who refused to accept Eartha because of her light complexion. Eartha was sent to live with relatives, eventually ending up in the household of a woman named Mamie Kitt in Harlem, New York City, whose surname Eartha took as her own. She attended the Metropolitan Vocational High School in New York, where she was a classmate of Marlon Brando and James Dean.
Despite her traumatic early years, Eartha Kitt went on to become one of the most internationally celebrated entertainers of the 20th century — a singer, dancer, actress, and social activist who performed in dozens of languages, played Catwoman in the 1960s Batman television series, and became infamous for speaking out against the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon in 1968, a moment that effectively derailed her American career for a decade.
Father's Side: Unknown Identity
Eartha Kitt's father's identity was one of the defining mysteries of her life. She grew up knowing almost nothing about him. The most commonly cited account holds that he was a white man — specifically the son of the plantation owner where Annie Mae Keith worked as a sharecropper — and that Eartha was conceived by rape.
In a 2013 biography, British journalist John Williams identified Eartha's father as Daniel Sturkie, a local white doctor from North, South Carolina. However, Kitt's daughter, Kitt McDonald Shapiro, has publicly questioned the accuracy of this claim, and no definitive genealogical proof has been presented.
What is clear from Eartha Kitt's own testimony and the accounts of those who knew her is that her father's absence and unknown identity were sources of profound personal pain throughout her life. She spoke of growing up without a sense of paternal origin — a void that, combined with her mother's rejection of her, shaped her fierce independence and her determination to define herself on her own terms.
Mother's Side: African American and Cherokee Roots
Annie Mae Keith, Eartha Kitt's mother, was a sharecropper in the cotton fields of South Carolina. She was of Cherokee and African American descent — a biracial heritage that was itself the product of generations of intermingling between Cherokee Native Americans and African Americans in the region.
The Cherokee people are one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the American South. Many Cherokee, particularly those who remained in the South rather than being forcibly relocated to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears, intermarried with African Americans and free Black communities throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Annie Mae Keith's Cherokee and African ancestry reflects this historical reality.
Annie Mae ultimately abandoned Eartha, choosing a male partner who would not accept a light-skinned child. This act of rejection by her own mother was the foundational wound of Eartha Kitt's life — and the thing she would spend decades trying to understand and transcend. After Annie Mae's death, Eartha was sent to New York to live with Mamie Kitt, whose name she adopted.
Grandparents: A Complete Picture
| Grandparent | Heritage |
|---|---|
| Paternal Grandfather | [Not publicly known] — reportedly white South Carolinian (plantation owner's family) |
| Paternal Grandmother | [Not publicly known] |
| Maternal Grandfather | [Not publicly known] — African American and/or Cherokee |
| Maternal Grandmother | [Not publicly known] — African American and/or Cherokee |
Eartha Kitt's grandparents are largely undocumented. Given the period of her birth (1927), the sharecropping background of her mother's family, and the racial segregation and record-keeping inequities of the Jim Crow South, detailed genealogical records are difficult to trace. Her maternal grandparents were of African American and Cherokee heritage; her paternal grandparents were of unknown or white background based on the accounts of her paternity.
DNA & Genetic Ancestry
Eartha Kitt, who died in 2008, did not participate in any publicly documented DNA ancestry testing such as 23andMe or AncestryDNA during her lifetime. No "Finding Your Roots" or "Who Do You Think You Are?" episode featuring her has been documented. Based on documented family history — a mother of African American and Cherokee Native American descent, and an unknown (reportedly white) father — her heritage appears to have been a blend of African, Native American (Cherokee), and possibly European ancestries. Without confirmed genetic testing, this is based on biographical accounts rather than genetic data.
Nationality vs. Ethnicity
Eartha Kitt's nationality was American. She was born in South Carolina and remained an American citizen throughout her life, despite extensive international career activity that took her to France, England, and dozens of other countries. During the period when her outspoken anti-Vietnam War statement caused the U.S. government's CIA to reportedly place her under surveillance and effectively blacklist her from American performance venues, she continued her career primarily in Europe and Asia — but never renounced her American citizenship.
Her ethnicity was mixed: primarily African American and Cherokee Native American, with possibly some European (white) ancestry through her unknown father. Her lived cultural identity was Black American — shaped by her years in Harlem, her training in the Black performance traditions through the Katherine Dunham Company, and her career as a Black entertainer in mid-20th century America.
Eartha Kitt in Her Own Words
Eartha Kitt was famously outspoken throughout her life. On her racial and personal identity, she often defied easy categorization. When asked about herself, she once said: "I am a product of every culture in the world, because I was raised by the United Nations of households — the Black household, the white household, the international household."
She spoke directly about her painful origins: growing up without knowing who her father was, being rejected by her mother, finding family in New York through Mamie Kitt and later through the Katherine Dunham dance company. Her personal story was one of self-creation — she built an identity from fragments, fashioning an international persona that transcended the racial and social boxes of her time.
Relationships and Children
Eartha Kitt was married once, to businessman William O. McDonald, from 1960 to 1965. They had one daughter together, Kitt McDonald Shapiro, born January 26, 1961. Kitt McDonald Shapiro is white-presenting and has been an active keeper of her mother's legacy, running the Eartha Kitt estate and speaking publicly about Eartha's life and heritage. Shapiro has questioned some of the claims made about her maternal grandfather's identity, indicating that the question of Eartha's paternity remains unresolved even to the family.
Is Eartha Kitt Alive?
No. Eartha Kitt passed away on December 25, 2008 — Christmas Day — at the age of 81, in New York City. The cause of death was colon cancer. She died exactly where she had lived her adult life and built her career: in New York, the city that had taken her in as a rejected child from South Carolina and given her the stage on which she would become a legend.
Visual Family Tree
Eartha Kitt (African American, Cherokee Native American, possibly white European)
Father [Identity unknown — reportedly white, plantation owner's son]
Paternal Grandfather [Not publicly known] · Paternal Grandmother [Not publicly known]
Annie Mae Keith (African American and Cherokee Native American)
Maternal Grandfather [Not publicly known] (African American/Cherokee) · Maternal Grandmother [Not publicly known] (African American/Cherokee)
Sources
EthniCelebrity Research Team
Ethnicity & Heritage Writers
Our team specialises in researching and documenting the ethnic backgrounds, nationality, and ancestry of public figures — drawing on genealogical records, interviews, and verified biographical sources.