Joséphine Baker

Josephine Baker – born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri – was a singer, dancer, actress, civil rights activist and a French Resistance agent. She was a pioneer of music hall and an icon of the Roaring Twenties. Born into a poor family, she left school to work at the age of 13. A street dancer, she joined the Dixie Steppers dance troupe and went to New York to perform on Broadway in the musical Shuffle Along. In 1925, she was offered a starring role in the Revue nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Josephine Baker quickly conquered the whole of Paris in the Roaring Twenties with her exotic dancing, her humor, her audacity and her humorous and/or sentimental songs. Some of her classic songs include “J'ai deux amours” (1930), “La Petite tonkinoise” (1930), and “Si j'étais blanche” (“If I Was White”, 1932). She was a fashion icon with her feathered outfits and her banana belt and became an advertising model. She was also an actress, appearing in the films La Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934), and Princess Tam Tam (1935). Josephine Baker became a naturalized French citizen with her third marriage in 1937, moving to the Château des Milandes in the Dordogne. She became a counter-espionage agent during the Second World War and was appointed second lieutenant. Josephine Baker received the French Resistance Medal (1946), the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre (1961). A victim of segregation during her time in the United States, she was invited by Martin Luther King to deliver a speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. She continued to perform in France despite financial difficulties and adopted twelve orphan children, who lived in her castle, which she was forced to sell in 1969. Welcomed in Monaco by Princess Grace Kelly, Joséphine Baker died at the age of 68 from a heart attack in Paris on April 12, 1975, after a series of concerts in Bobino. On November 30, 2021, Joséphine Baker was admitted to the Panthéon in Paris, and is considered among the greatest figures in the history of France.