One of the world’s most famous, popular and influential American-born dancers was also a war heroine with a life worthy of Hollywood – and being black, was pretty much unknown in the US until the 1950s. Josephine Baker was born in St Louis in 1906. She became a vaudeville performer in her teens, and travelled to Paris in 1925 as a member of La Revue Nègre. African-American jazz was popular in 1920s Paris, and Baker quickly established herself as a popular performer on the cabaret scene.
African art of all kinds was sold at the time on its sensuality; Baker’s stage performances as a dancer added wit, humour and simple clowning to the mix; she was beautiful, clever, talented, made people laugh, and sometimes wore a skirt made of feathers. Paris loved her, and she soon opened her own club – Chez Josephine. She also, in 1927, starred in a movie, La Sirène de Tropiques (a not highly rated film, but it does show her dancing in her prime – early film of Baker can usually be found on YouTube).
During WWII. Baker worked in exile for French military intelligence and in 1946 was awarded the Rosette de la Resistance and became a knight of he Legion d’honneur. Baker retired in the mid-1950s to look after her 12 adopted children, her ‘rainbow tribe’ (her only child was stillborn in 1941) and fell upon hard times. She performed in America, but resolutely refused to perform before segregated audiences, even though she needed the money (Princess Grace of Monaco was among her benefactors).
In 1963, Baker joined the ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’ and stood beside Martin Luther King on the platform, She wore her Free French uniform and her Legion d’honneur medal. Other prominent black female entertainers on the march included Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, and Mahalia Jackson. Baker was the only woman – white or black – given a chance to speak, as she introduced Rosa Parks and other ‘Negro Women Fighters for Freedom’ to the crowd, which she charmed the crowd, as she had done throughout her career, with her humour: standing next to Martin Luther King, she told the crowd they were ‘salt and pepper’ – just what it should be’. No one that day put it better.
What Happened Next
As happened with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the American newspapers initially largely failed to see – despite the proximity of the Lincoln Memorial – the significance of the march, and made little mention of any of the speeches, even King’s speech. And while King’s speech is now remembered for ‘I have a dream’, King, like the other speakers, was actually talking hardball for most of the time: ‘There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship’. Baker died of a stroke in 1975, and was given a state funeral in Paris. See also also 1939: Abel Meeropol sings ‘Strange Fruit’ to Billie Holliday; 1946: Beryl Formby tells Daniel Malan to piss off