[1] Her parents were part of the Haitian aristocracy who fled Haiti; her ancestor, Napoleon Premice, was a Haitian-born Black veteran of the U.S.

He was imprisoned in Guiana for his role in the plot, and both he and a fellow prisoner to whom he was chained were forced to escape and flee through the woods to friends that awaited them on the coast.

Josephine was nominated for a Tony Award for her work in the 1957 musical Jamaica as Ginger alongside leading lady Lena Horne.

Her next Broadway appearance in A Hand Is on the Gate, where she performed African American poetry works alongside James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, and Gloria Foster, garnered her a second Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony Award nomination.

Reviewing the production in The New York Times, Clive Barnes wrote that Ms. Premice "can almost make a feather boa come alive.