Joséphine Baker

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Freda Josephine McDonald, known as Joséphine Baker, was a singer, dancer, actress, revue leader and French resistance fighter of American origin, born on June 3, 1906 in Saint-Louis (Missouri, United States) and died on April 12, 1975 in Paris (France).

A music hall star and icon of the Roaring Twenties, she became French in 1937 after her marriage to Jean Lion, an industrial sugar broker. During the Second World War, she was an honorable correspondent for the French secret services and often performed for free in North Africa in front of the Allied troops and ended the war as a lieutenant in the French Army of Liberation. In 1946, she received the French Resistance Medal.

She then used her great popularity to serve the fight against racism and for the emancipation of Blacks, in particular by supporting the American civil rights movement. On August 28, 1963, when Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, she stood by his side in French Air Force uniform and was the only woman to speak from the Lincoln Memorial.

On August 18, 1961, in the grounds of the Château des Milandes in Dordogne, Joséphine Baker was decorated with the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre.

In 2021, nearly fifty years after her death, she entered the Pantheon, becoming the sixth woman and the first black woman to join the Republican "temple."


Joséphine Baker - Wikipedia (french) : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9phine_Baker


Joséphine Baker - IMDb : http://imdb.com/name/nm0001927/?ref_=fn_all_nme_1

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Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, MO, in 1906 to Carrie McDonald, a laundress, and Eddie Carson, a musician. Her early life hinted at her future career. She first danced for the public on the streets of St. Louis for nickels and dimes. Later she became a chorus girl on the St. Louis stage. At age 15 she married Pullman porter William Howard Baker, but left him when she ran away from St. Louis at age 17, feeling there was too much racial discrimination in the city. She eventually made her way to Paris, France. Her first job in Paris was in "La revue negre". Her next significant job was at the Folies Bergere, where she was a member of the club's all-black revue. It was there, in 1925, that she first performed her famous "banana dance". She quickly became a favorite of the French, and her fame grew, but she had many ups and downs during her career. Although popular in France, during the "Red Scare" era of the 1950s, she was falsely accused of being a Communist and informed that she was no longer welcome in the US (in 1937 she had renounced her American citizenship, utterly disgusted by the blatant and official racism against blacks, and became a French citizen).

In 1961 Josephine was awarded the Legion of Honor, France's highest award. In the late 1960s she began having financial difficulties, and stopped performing in 1968. Grace Kelly, who by that time had married Prince Rainier of Monaco and was now known as Princess Grace of Monaco, offered her a home in Monaco when she learned of Josephine's financial problems. At the request of Princess Grace, Josephine performed at Monaco's summer ball in 1974 and was a great success. That same year she staged a week of performances in New York City and called the show "An Evening with Josephine Baker". She had just begun a Paris revue celebrating her half-century on the stage when on April 10, 1975, she was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and went into a coma. She died without regaining consciousness. Her funeral was held in Paris, and she was buried in Monaco.


Nicknames
Black Venus - Tumpie - Black Pearl - Creole Goddess

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More "banana" skirt