Josephine Baker – Black American Who Became a French Heroine
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 30 of our 31 day tribute to Black women we should all know. Today features Josephine Baker, born in America and largely ignored here, she became known worldwide and beloved in France.
Josephine Baker is a name that many have heard but don’t know much about her. She was very beloved in France and a strong advocate for civil rights in America and everywhere.
She was born in St Louis, Missouri and had a difficult childhood, yet persisted and became a world known woman of means and outspoken on Civil Rights.
She has recently been honored by the people of France. We take a look at who she was while growing up.
Born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri both of her parents were entertainers. Her mother Carrie was adopted by Richard and Elvira McDonald, both were former slaves of African and Native American descent. Her father is listed as Eddie Carson a vaudeville drummer although there are some questions that her father may have been a benevolent White man whose identity remains unknown.
Her parents performed before segregated audiences and would sometimes bring her on stage with them. They did not hit it big and eventually gave up the business.
The suggestion that her father was White emerge from records that show Josephine’s mother was admitted to a White hospital and spent 2 weeks there before giving birth. Racism was an ugly stain on humanity and during those times Blacks have died because they were not admitted to the hospital because of skin color.
Family members also believe Carrie became by her White employer shortly after she started working for him.
About the age of 11, Josephine witnessed the Race Riots of St. Louis in which Whites murdered up to 150 Black citizens. As expected, this was a significant event in her life.
Necessity drove her to the work force at an early age and she would do odd jobs to survive. When she was unable to find work, she would dance in the streets collecting money from onlookers. She caught the attention of a Black troupe and ran away to join them at the age of 15. She also married at the age of 15 taking her husband’s name, Baker which she maintained for the remainder of her life.
She also dropped her first name Freda and became Josephine Baker. This was her second marriage as she had married at the age of 13 to get out of the house but divorced shortly after.
Josephine was raised in a racially mixed but low income neighborhood with rooming houses, brothels and other homes many without indoor plumbing. Josephine was often poorly dressed and hungry. She worked as a live in domestic for various White families including abusive ones. One woman even burned her hands for using too much soap in the laundry.
She dropped out of school at the age of 12. Baker’s relationship with her mother was strained because her mother did not want her to pursue entertainment after her experiences. However, she experienced some success and would return from travels with gifts for her mother and sister.
At the age of 15, Baker moved to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and performed in several clubs there. She was a featured dancer and able to deliver a comic presence in addition to demonstrating her outstanding dance skills.
In 1925 Baker seized the opportunity to go to France and was an instant success. She was a great performer and fascinated the French. She performed exotic dancing appearing almost nude. She was often seen with her pet cheetah “Chiquita”, adorned with a diamond collar. Her costumes were mesmerizing as well. She also added singing to her repertoire which added to her alure.
There was another famous Black entertainer and nightclub owner in Paris during the time of Josephine Baker. Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith better known as “Bricktop” was a singer, dancer and nightclub owner. She also owned clubs in Mexico City and Rome.
There were opportunities outside of America for Blacks. Josephine Baker was the most successful American entertainer in France. Ernest Hemmingway called Baker “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” They spent many hours talking in Paris.
Picasso drew her and her alluring beauty. Jean Cocteau the author helped her attain international stardom. Baker was well known all over Europe and was the first Black American to visit Yugoslavia, she even donated money to the poor children of Servia.
She did receive opposition from the clergy and morality police. Baker was highly popular in all of Europe but never regarded with much consideration in America. While with the Ziegfeld Follies she received mediocre press. Described by Time magazine as the “Negro wench … her dancing and singing as easily topped by anyone outside of Paris. Her voice was criticized as being “too thin” and “dwarf-like”.
She returned to Europe heartbroken and because of the different experiences became a French Citizen, giving up her American citizenship. France declared war on Germany in 1939 and Baker was recruited by the French military intelligence agency as an “honorable correspondent”.
As an entertainer she had reason to travel and collected information. She attended high level parties attended by many foreign dignitaries. She socialized at gatherings such as embassies, ministries charming people while secretly gathering information. Her lifestyle allowed her to rub shoulders with those in the know including high-ranking Japanese, Italian bureaucrats.
She did all of this without raising suspicion. She was very effective and proud of her contributions. After the war, Baker received the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance. She was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by General Charles de Gaulle. Honored for her work in the war.
Baker was invited to the United States where she had a public battle over desegregating of the audience. She won the battle and had a national tour after completing the Miami engagement. The final honor was a parade in front of 100,000 people in Harlem and she earned the honor of NAACP’s “Woman of the Year”.
Baker was always a strong supporter of Civil Rights. When she returned to New York she was she and her husband who was White were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial discrimination. This treatment upset her, and she started writing articles about segregation in America. She also began traveling in the South, even speaking at Fisk University a HBCU in Nashville, Tennessee. She refused to perform before segregated audiences and turned down an offer of $10,000.00 to perform at a Miami club, they eventually met her demands.
She also integrated the shows in Las Vegas, Nevada. She started getting threatening calls from people claiming to be from the Ku Klux Klan. In 1951 Baker criticized the Stork Club for its policy of discriminating against Black patrons. She and her party were ignored for over an hour.
She publicly criticized Columnist Walter Winchell for not coming to her defense. Winchell then claimed that she was a communist, a very serious charge in those times. This led to her getting the rath of J Edgar Hoover who revoked her work visa which resulting in her having to cancel her other engagements and return to France.
While at the Stork Club Actress Grace Kelly took Baker by the arm and stormed out with her entire party vowing never to return. Grace Kelly later married Prince Rainier of Monaco.
The 2 women became close friends after the incident and remained close. Baker was so dedicated to the idea of civil rights and the ability of people to get along that she adopted 11 children from countries all over the world. When near bankruptcy, Kelly offered her a villa and financial assistance.
Baker worked with the NAACP, and they declared May 20, 1951 “Josephine Baker Day”. She was presented with lifetime membership presented by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Ralph Bunche. to see the post, click here.
She was also a crusader for the “Save Willie McGee” effort. McGee was tried for rape of a White woman. He was tried 3 times for the crime. The first jury, all White, all Male, took 2.5 minutes to return a verdict which was overturned on a technicality.
The jury on the 2nd trial, again all White, all Male, took all of 11 minutes and was again overturned on a technicality.
The 3rd jury, you guessed it, all White, all Male, took almost an hour. Rape was a capital crime and many Blacks had been put to death under the law, but no White man had ever been sentenced to death. McGee was executed in 1951.
Baker spoke at the March on Washington standing next to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was the only official female speaker.
She wore her Free French uniform with the Légion d’honneur. The words she spoke “I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents and much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world”
After King’s assignation, it is reported that Coretta Scott King approached Baker in the Netherlands to ask if she would take her husband’s place as head of the Civil Rights Movement. It is reported that Baker declined saying her children were “too young to lose their mother.
” PARIS — The remains of American-born singer and dancer Josephine Baker will be reinterred at the Pantheon monument in Paris, making the entertainer who is a World War II hero in France, the first Black woman to get the country’s highest honor.
Le Parisien newspaper reported Sunday that French President Emmanuel Macron decided to organize a ceremony on November 30 at the Paris monument, which houses the remains of scientist Marie Curie, French philosopher Voltaire, writer Victor Hugo and other French luminaries.
The presidential palace confirmed the newspaper’s information. After her death in 1975, Baker was buried in Monaco, dressed in a French military uniform with the medals she received for her role as part of the French Resistance during the war.
Baker will be the fifth woman to be honored with a Pantheon burial and will also be the first artist. In addition to Josephine Baker,
France has been a place that appears to be welcoming to Black Americans and we call attention to Eugene Bullard, the first Black fighter pilot, even before the famed Tuskegee Airmen. To see this amazing post, click here
Bessie Coleman, the first female pilot with an International license had to go to France for training because she was unable to obtain training in the United States because of 2 factors, she was a female, and her skin was black. See this post on a great Black American click here.
The Harlem Hellfighters, the highest decorated unit during World War I was a Black unit stationed in France. These little known troops never gave an inch of ground and were highly valued by the French. To see a post on this outstanding unit, click here.
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For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. To see the posts, click here
For Black History Month 2021, we focused on Black Medical Achievements, Inventors and Scientists.To see those posts, click here.
We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. To see the posts, click here.
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Josephine Baker Living St Louis
From Nine PBS, Living St. Louis Producer Ruth Ezell takes a special look back at the life of Josephine Baker, the first African-American female to reach international stardom. Born in St. Louis in 1906, it was Baker’s early years marked by poverty and transience that influenced her most. She lived in a racially divided neighborhood but would hang out in the entertainment district—watching performances that she could imitate on the streets for money. Baker’s big break came when she moved to France and danced topless in a banana skirt. Despite her world-wide success, Baker used her celebrity status to break down racial barriers and focus on humanitarian efforts.
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Josephine Baker: The Hungry Heart
Based on twenty years of research and thousands of interviews, this authoritative biography of performer Josephine Baker (1906-1975) provides a candid look at her tempestuous life. Born into poverty in St. Louis, the uninhibited chorus girl became the sensation of Europe and the last century’s first black sex symbol. A heroine of the French Resistance in World War II, she entranced figures as diverse as de Gaulle, Tito, Castro, Princess Grace, two popes, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet Josephine was also, as one critic put it, “a monster who made Joan Crawford look like the Virgin Mary.” Jean-Claude Baker’s book also reveals her outbursts that resulted in lasting feuds, her imperious treatment of family and entourage members, and her ambivalent attitudes concerning her ethnic background. Reconciling Josephine’s many personas―Jazz-age icon, national hero of France, proponent of Civil Rights, mother of children from across the globe―Josephine: The Hungry Heart gives readers the inside story on a star unlike any other before or since.
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The World-Famous Entertainer and Activist | Josephine Baker
Welcome to Forgotten Lives! In today’s episode, we are looking into the life of Josephine Baker, an entertainer, activist and Resistance agent!
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Bath and Shower
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The Josephine Baker Collection (Zou Zou / Princess Tam Tam / Siren of the Tropics)
ABH – Josephine Baker Siren of the Tropics
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Joséphine Baker: The 1st Black Superstar ©
Forget About It Film & TV, for BBC Wales. 2006. Narrated by Josette Simon. Directed by Suzanne Phillips.
This video is available, simply click on it and you will be taken to it on YouTube
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Fragrance
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Josephine Baker’s Last Dance
In this illuminating biographical novel, Sherry Jones spans Josephine’s early years in servitude and poverty in America to her rise to fame as a showgirl in her famous banana skirt to her activism against discrimination, and her many loves and losses. From 1920s Paris to 1960s Washington to her final, triumphant performance, one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century comes to stunning life on the page.
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How Was Josephine Baker Wealthiest Black Woman in the World?
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When Paris Sizzled:
The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Années folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them—one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior. The epicenter of all this creativity, as well as of the era’s good times, was Montparnasse, where impoverished artists and writers found colleagues and cafés, and tourists discovered the Paris of their dreams. Major figures on the Paris scene—such as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Picasso, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Proust—continued to hold sway, while others now came to prominence—including Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, Cole Porter, and Josephine Baker, as well as André Citroën, Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, and the irrepressible Kiki of Montparnasse.
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Hair Care
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Josephine Baker to Be Honored With a Panthéon Burial
Ms. Baker will be the first Black woman to be entombed in the Panthéon in Paris, a symbolic move amid racial tensions in France. PARIS — Josephine Baker, an American-born Black dancer and civil rights activist who in the early 20th century became one of France’s great music-hall stars, will be laid to rest in the Panthéon, France’s storied tomb of heroes, a close adviser to President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday. The honor will make Ms. Baker — who became a French citizen in 1937 and died in Paris in 1975 — the first Black woman and one of very few foreign-born figures to be interred there. The Panthéon houses the remains of some of France’s most revered, including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The decision to transfer Ms. Baker’s remains, which are buried in Monaco, comes after a petition calling for the move, started by the writer Laurent Kupferman, caught the attention of Mr. Macron. The petition has garnered nearly 40,000 signatures over the past two years. Mr. Kupferman suggested that Mr. Macron approved the reinterment “because, probably, Josephine Baker embodies the Republic of possibilities. ”How could a woman who came from a discriminated and very poor background achieve her destiny and become a world star?” Mr. Kupferman said. “That was possible in France at a time when it was not in the United States. “Entombment at the Panthéon can be approved only by a president, and Ms. Baker’s reinterment is highly symbolic, coming as France has been convulsed by heated culture wars over its model of social integration, and as gender and race issues have fractured the country around new political front lines. The news was first reported by Le Parisien newspaper. The funeral will take place on Nov. 30. Ms. Baker, born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906 in St. Louis, started her career as a dancer in New York in the early 1920s before heading to France, where she quickly became a sensation. She said that she had been motivated to move abroad because of discrimination that she had endured in the United States. “I just couldn’t stand America, and I was one of the first colored Americans to move to Paris,” she told The Guardian newspaper in 1974. Along with other Black American artists — including the writers Richard Wright and James Baldwin — Ms. Baker said she found in France a freedom that she felt denied in the United States. In Paris, Ms. Baker quickly rose to fame and became a fixture in shows at Les Folies Bergères, a famous music hall, dominating France’s cabarets with her sense of humor, her frantic dancing and her iconic songs, like “J’ai Deux Amours,” or “I Have Two Loves.”But part of her artistic career was also built around stereotyped and erotic dances, like the so-called banana dance.
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We see Josephine Baker, an American born Black entertainer and outspoken advocate for Civil Rights advocate Kiki honored by France with highest honors, yet we see outstanding Black Americans being highly honored by others while they remain mainly unknown in the country of their birth. Now is the time to examine why we don’g honor these worthy people.