Europe 1 with AFP 10:23 am, August 22, 2021, modified at 10:26 am, August 22, 2021
Emmanuel Macron's entourage confirmed information from the "Parisian": the Head of State has decided to proceed with the third pantheonization of his five-year term, in the person of Joséphine Baker, a great artist and figure of the Resistance.
The Franco-American artist Joséphine Baker (1906-1975), a prominent figure in the Resistance and the anti-racist struggle, will be pantheonized on November 30, according to information in the Sunday edition of the
Parisian
citing President Emmanuel Macron, whose entourage confirmed the veracity. "It's yes!", Said the Head of State on Wednesday July 21 at the Elysee Palace, according to the daily, after an interview with a group of personalities who came to plead for this initiative, including in particular "the novelist Pascal Bruckner, the singer Laurent Voulzy, the entrepreneur Jennifer Guesdon, the essayist Laurent Kuperman and especially Brian Bouillon-Baker, one of the sons of Joséphine Baker".
The ceremony will take place on November 30, according to
Le Parisien
, making the famous magazine leader, born in Missouri and buried in Monaco, the first black woman to rest in the secular necropolis.
A petition in favor of pantheonization
The file in favor of the interpreter of the famous song "I have two loves" had been examined for the first time at the end of June by the Elysee, according to
Le Parisien
.
A petition in favor of the pantheonization of the artist, launched two years ago by Laurent Kupferman, had gathered 38,000 signatures.
"Artist, first black international star, muse of the cubists, resistant during World War II in the French Army, active alongside Martin Luther King for civil rights in the United States of America and in France alongside the Licra (International League against Anti-Semitism, now Licra: International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, editor's note) (…) we think that Joséphine Baker, 1906-1975, has her place in the Pantheon ", argues the text.
Simone Veil, last pantheonized personality
For more than a century, the Pantheon has been the secular necropolis of French "great men", whose memory "grateful homeland" wishes to honor.
This imposing building dominates the Sainte-Geneviève mountain, one of the hillocks of Paris, in the center of the capital.
Among the 80 "pantheonized" are politicians, writers, scientists, some religious and many military. Only five women are currently buried there, including Simone Veil, the last personality to have been, in 2018.