Josephine Baker American born French Dancer

 

Josephine Baker was the first black woman to be honored at the Paris Pantheon, Paris' highest honor on 30th November 2021. 

Freda Josephine McDonald, naturalized as Josephine Baker was an American-born black French dancer, singer, spy, actress, and Civil Rights Activist. She retained the surname of her second husband William Howard Baker. Her ancestry is unknown. Her mother Carrie and her adopted parents were slaves. In 1917 when she was 11 Baker experienced terrifying racial violence. By age 12, she had dropped out of school. At 13, she worked as a waitress, scavenging for food. A symbol of the Jazz Age she became a star of the theatre in 1920s Paris. She first danced in Paris in 1925. Next year she became a sensation with her famous performance 'Dance Sauvage' at the Folies Bergere cabaret hall. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 French silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Etievant. From the 1930s Baker began to sing on stage. During World War II she worked for French Intelligence against the Germans, then for the French Resistance that fought the Nazi occupation. For this, she was awarded several honours by France including the French Legion by General Charles de Gaulle. Baker renounced her American citizenship and became a French national after marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. She raised her children in France. Baker supported the American civil rights movement. In 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr. In January 1966, Fidel Castro invited Baker to perform at the "Teatro Musical de La Habana" in Havana, Cuba, at the seventh-anniversary celebrations of his revolution. In 1968, Baker visited Yugoslavia and made appearances in Belgrade and Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. Born on 3rd June 1906 in St. Luis, Missouri, America, Josephine Baker died on 12th April 1975 aged 68 due to cerebral hemorrhage.