June 3, 1906 – Birth of Josephine Baker: Entertainer, Civil Rights Activist, and French Resistance Agent

Josephine Baker is largely known today only for the iconic photo of her performing in Paris in 1927 wearing only a short skirt made out of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace.

Baker was born in the United States and initially had a successful career on vaudeville. She moved to France to escape American practices of segregation. It was after joining the Folies Bergère that she gained fame for her scanty costume. She wanted to be known for something other than her “danse sauvage” however, and trained herself to sing. By 1927 she was earning more than any entertainer in Europe.

She tried returning to the U.S. to perform, but American audiences rejected the idea of a powerful and sophisticated Black woman, so she went back to France. There, she was accepted in ways she never would be in America. As The Guardian reported, young Ernest Hemingway spent hours sitting with her, and Picasso often drew her portrait.

In 1937 Baker became a French citizen. When France declared war on Germany in 1939, she was recruited by French intelligence to use her demand as an artist to gather information for the resistance at embassy venues where she performed.

Baker smuggled information about German installations and troop movements in invisible ink on her sheet music or pinned on notes inside her underwear.  After the war she was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Medal of the French Resistance with Rosette, and de Gaulle named her a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, the country’s highest decoration.

Baker returned to America after the war and began adopting children of many races, which upset Americans firmly dedicated to racial separation. She became the subject of FBI scrutiny as well as McCarthy’s witch hunt “because she used her international prominence to call attention to the discriminatory racial practices of the United States, her native land, when she traveled throughout the world.” (Mary L. Dudziak, “Josephine Baker, Racial Protest, and the Cold War,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 2, Sep., 1994, pp. 543-570 at 543)

In the 1960s she worked to aid the cause of civil rights. In 1968, she was offered unofficial leadership in the movement in the United States by Coretta Scott King, following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Baker declined the offer out of concern for the welfare of her children.

Baker remained beloved and respected throughout her life. Over her lifetime she reportedly received approximately 1,500 marriage proposals. In 1975 at age 68 she held a revue in Paris financed by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, along with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which opened to rave reviews. Four days later, Baker was found in a coma in her bed surrounded by newspaper reviews praising her show. She had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died the same day, on April 12, 1975.

After her death, Baker’s adoptive country honored her for her wartime service once again when she became the first American-born woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral.