- Born
- 3 June 1906St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Died
- 12 April 1975Paris, France · aged 68
Josephine Baker
The star of 1920s Paris was also a spy for the Resistance and a civil rights fighter – and, her biographers say, loved women as well as men.
Josephine Baker grew up in deep poverty in St. Louis and was working as a maid at the age of eight. As a teenager she joined a touring vaudeville troupe and danced in shows on Broadway.
In 1925 she went to Paris with “La Revue Nègre” and became a sensation overnight. At the Folies Bergère she danced in a skirt made of artificial bananas, an image that came to symbolise the Jazz Age. She became the most famous Black entertainer in Europe and in 1937 a French citizen.
During the Second World War she worked for the French Resistance, smuggling secret information in her sheet music, and was later awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour. She refused to perform before segregated audiences in the United States and spoke at the March on Washington in 1963. She adopted twelve children from different countries, her “Rainbow Tribe”.
Baker was married four times to men. According to her biographers, including her adopted son Jean-Claude Baker, she also had relationships with women throughout her life. She died in Paris in 1975, days after a triumphant comeback show. In 2021 she became the first Black woman to be honoured in the Panthéon.