" Well..." He paused, and then the rest of the words followed in a rush. " I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly."
It was there, working at a printing house in the Flatiron district and living in Hell's Kitchen and Greenwich Village, that she shed the name Elizabeth and began going by Connie.
Born Margaret Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, April 4, 1928, the hells she lived through began at the age of seven when she was raped by her mother's boyfriend.