Joséphine Baker
Joséphine Baker in Havana, Cuba, 1950. Image credit: Rudolf Suroch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Parisian enthusiasm for jazz exploded in the mid-1920s after Joséphine Baker, an African-American singer-dancer, appeared in the Revue Nègre musical show and at the Folies Bergère cabaret music hall. Initially, audiences were curious, shocked, and intrigued by a scantily-clad performer they considered to be ‘exotic’ and ‘wild’. However, Baker used her multitude of talents to build an enormously successful career as a singer, dancer, and actress and went on to work with the French Resistance and American civil rights movement.
Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906 and began working as household help while still in her childhood. She also began to sing informally in public to earn additional money which led to work in local vaudeville groups. By her mid-teens, Baker had been married twice but prioritized performing even as it took her on the road away from St. Louis. She joined the chorus line of several musical shows in New York before making her first trip to France at the age of 19. There, Baker repositioned her career by breaking out of the background of the chorus line as well as gaining a brighter outlook on daily life with less overt racism in France compared with 1920s America. She became a fluent French speaker and singer, headlining her own cabaret show, and by 1931, the release of her song « J’ai deux amours » cemented Baker’s place in French culture. Her stage presence, comedic timing, and connection with audiences led to starring roles in films such as La Sirène des Tropiques and Zou-Zou. Baker became one of the highest paid entertainers in Europe and a member of Parisian artistic society, socializing with Jean Cocteau and Ernest Hemingway.
Her multifaceted success in France contrasted sharply with the American life she had left. A 1936 return to New York to perform on Broadway went poorly and the shock of being told to use the rear entrances and being barred from restaurants due to her race did not sit well with her. Baker returned to France where she married Jean Lion, a French businessman, in 1937 and became a French citizen. Upon the outbreak of World War II, she undertook a secret position working with the French government. Baker’s encounters with international diplomats and military officers at social events in Paris allowed her to engage them in conversation to pick up information that she reported back to French authorities. Since her performing career allowed her to travel frequently without creating undue suspicion, Baker was also able to interact with potential information sources abroad and serve as a courier by hiding documents in her sheet music and personal effects.
Château des Milandes, home of Joséphine Baker and family from 1940 to 1968. Image credit: Bthv, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Baker continued to support her adopted country after moving to the Dordogne region of southwestern France after the Nazis occupied a large part of the country in 1940. She provided shelter for Resistance personnel in her home, the Château des Milandes, and went on tour to continue her intelligence gathering activities as well as performing for Allied soldiers. Her bravery and loyalty to France were recognized with a Croix de Guerre medal for heroism, the Médaille de la Résistance, and being named a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.
After the war, Baker reappeared onstage in Paris at the Folies Bergère and returned to the United States in 1951 for performances in Miami. She insisted on integrated audiences regardless of the policies of the venues where she was booked and embarked on a national tour after a sold-out run in Miami. In recognition of her civil rights work, the NAACP declared May 20, 1951 to be ‘Josephine Baker Day’. However, her battles against club practices of segregating audiences culminated in a public spat in New York where she was accused of being a Communist. The subsequent revocation of her U.S. work visa kept Baker out of the country for nearly a decade. Nonetheless, her personal life reflected her fervent belief that humans of different backgrounds could and should live together in harmony. Together with her fourth husband, French conductor/composer Jo Bouillon, Baker adopted children from around the world that she called her ‘Rainbow Tribe’, a group that grew to include two daughters and ten sons who lived at the Château des Milandes and often traveled with their famous mother.
Josephine Baker publicity poster, 1951. Image credit: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from Jean-Claude Baker.
Joséphine Baker returned to the United States in August 1963 to speak alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs where she famously noted that “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 ...”. The little girl with humble beginnings in St. Louis who had developed and shown her many abilities as a performer, spy, parent, and more wanted others to also be treated with dignity and afforded opportunities to shine and enjoy life.
As Baker stepped back from her professional career to raise her children, her marriage to Bouillon ended and mounting debts caused her to lose her home in 1968 and move close to Monaco at the behest of her close friend, Princess Grace. Baker then returned to the stage where her appeal remained as strong as ever, and performed for large crowds in Paris, London, New York, and elsewhere. In April 1975, she starred in her own retrospective, “Joséphine à Bobino 1975”, in the French capital where her career had taken off fifty years before. Just as before, the audiences that flocked to see her show included regular fans as well as famous artists of the time such as Sophia Loren, Liza Minelli, and Mick Jagger. Several days after this triumph, Baker succumbed to a fatal brain hemorrhage.
The country of France where Joséphine Baker felt at home accorded her full military honors at her funeral in recognition of her wartime service. In 2021, she was remembered and honored with a plaque in the Panthéon in Paris, a monument to distinguished French citizens. Baker was the first black woman to receive the honor and only the sixth woman overall. In his remarks at the induction ceremony, French President Macron noted that “Vous entrez dans notre Panthéon parce que, née américaine, il n’y a pas plus française que vous.” [Joséphine Baker], you enter in our Pantheon because, born an American, there is no one more French than you.
Activité de français
The song that made Joséphine Baker into a French icon refers to her two loves - ‘mon pays et Paris’. Whether ‘mon pays’ indicates the country of her birth, the one of her home, or another physical or figurative place is debated. Decide what you think by watching and listening to her performance of the song.
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