The first black artist to be celebrated in France, Joséphine Baker (1906-1975) thwarted the racist imagery that had made her famous to establish herself as a free woman, heroine of the Resistance, apostle of universal brotherhood and now "immortal" in the world. Pantheon.
Born in misery in the United States, the "Ebony Venus" became a beloved diva, entered counterintelligence during World War II and then led an international fight against racism by becoming the mother of 12 children, adopted in the United States. around the world.
Back, in pictures, on the life of the sixth woman to enter the Pantheon.
Director:
Olivier JUSZCZAK
Freda Josephine McDonald was born on June 3, 1906 in Saint Louis (Missouri) to a black Native American and a short-lived father of Spanish origin.
She grows up in vermin and segregation.
Placed as a servant, she stopped school to get married at 13.
A failure.
She joined a troupe of street dancers and married Willie Baker in 1921.
The young girl leaves her husband to try her luck in New York, but will keep her name.
She had difficulty integrating two troupes on Broadway then was convinced by a producer to join Paris with Sidney Bechet.
On October 2, 1925, the African-American dancer became the star of “La Revue Nègre” at the Champs-Elysées theater and reluctantly agreed to appear topless.
That evening, she delighted the whole of Paris with her “wild dance”.
The public discovers, blissfully, this black woman who plays with colonial fantasies.
In 1927, at the Folies Bergères, it is dressed in a simple belt of bananas and accompanied by a living panther that the burlesque artist radiates on stage.
The first song she performed, "I have two loves, my country and Paris", in 1930 at the Casino de Paris, consecrates her as a diva.
Free woman, she walks with a snake around her neck, a goat on a leash and creates scandals according to her whims.
His ardor on stage and his exoticism terrify surrealists like Francis Picabia or Robert Desnos.
He is credited with adventures with men and women.
In 1937, the “Ebony Venus” married businessman Jean Lion and became French.
Black woman, married to a Jewish man, Josephine Baker is a target for the Nazis.
From then on, its political commitment will become central.
She sang for the soldiers at the front and became an intelligence agent for General de Gaulle's Free French Forces.
She takes advantage of receptions to which she is invited in embassies to gather intelligence for counter-espionage.
The information collected is written in friendly ink, invisible on his musical scores.
The artist sometimes carries these compromising notes herself in her bra.
Victim of segregation in her native America, Joséphine Baker refused in 1940 to sing in front of the Germans in occupied Paris.
In 1946, she received the Medal of the Resistance.
On June 3, 1947, she married the conductor Jo Bouillon and together they bought the Château des Milandes, in the Dordogne.
In 1957, Joséphine Baker, in military costume, was decorated with the Legion of Honor as a civilian but also with the Croix de Guerre with palms from the hands of General Martial Valin (1898-1980).
Unable to bear children since a serious infection contracted in 1941 and an operation, Josephine Baker and her husband decide to adopt.
They start a “rainbow” family by taking in 12 adopted children from different countries to prove that “there is only one human race”.
In Milandes, she founded the "capital of fraternity", but the project was disproportionate and ruined.
She goes back on stage to save her domain.
In vain.
Joséphine and Jo, before their separation, have hatched around the castle a sort of leisure complex before its time.
In 1964, Brigitte Bardot launched a televised call and signed a big check that saved the Milandes.
But, four years later, the buildings were auctioned off and the artist expelled, at the age of 62.
Grace of Monaco will offer him hospitality.
Joséphine Baker returns to the Parisian stage of the Olympia in 1968.
She continues her career as an artist in different countries by participating in major galas.
On March 24, 1975, to celebrate her fifty years of career, she inaugurated the
Joséphine
retrospective
in Bobino.
She died a few days later, on April 12, 1975, from a stroke.
His funeral was celebrated on April 15 in the Church of the Madeleine, in Paris.
On November 30, 2021, when entering the Pantheon, she becomes “Immortal”.
Culture
Dance
Pantheon
Photo
Second World War