"Dare Josephine" is the name of the petition launched by essayist Laurent Kupferman for Josephine Baker to enter the Pantheon. The campaign, which began on the occasion of the Armistice Day of May 8, 1945, has already garnered more than 30,000 supporters and is due to gain momentum on June 3, the anniversary of the deceased artist. in 1975. "New signatories will be unveiled and the request will be sent to the Élysée", explains the author of the book "The Adventurers of the Republic". It will then be up to the Head of State to decide whether or not to pay him this tribute. "Its pantheonization would be a powerful symbol of national unity, emancipation and French universalism", enthuses already theFrench author.
Singer Joséphine Baker poses in her dressing room at the Strand Theater in New York, March 6, 1961. AP
Everyone knows the 1930s dancer with a sunny smile and communicative antics, wearing light outfits on the stage of cabarets. The first black international star, muse of the Cubists, Joséphine Baker is also a fervent patriot who became fully involved in the Resistance during the Second World War. From 1939, his dedication to France was total. Become French by her marriage in 1937 to Jean Lion (real name Levy), a Jewish industrialist, she uses her notoriety to convey messages of the highest importance, hidden in her bodices, with the beard of customs officers too busy asking him for autographs. It interferes in receptions given in foreign embassies to gather valuable information on the movements of German troops and its allies.She wrote to her 4,000 war godchildren to appease the torments and gave all the fees for her concerts to the French army. She even made the Milandes castle, which she rented at that time, a hard core of the Resistance.
Documents concerning Joséphine Baker kept for years in the archives of the medieval castle of Vincennes, east of Paris, photographed in 2016. François Mori, AP
Growing admiration
To date, the homeland "has shown itself to be grateful" with only five women out of the 80 "pantheonized" people.
She would thus join Simone Veil, Sophie Berthelot, Marie Curie, Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion.
But "Joséphine Baker must not enter the Pantheon because she was a woman or because she was black. She must enter it for the acts of courage that she rendered to the Nation", abounds Laurent Kupferman.
Bringing Joséphine Baker into the Pantheon, the idea is not new. The writer Régis Debray had already expressed the idea in a forum of the World on December 16, 2013. "The proposal had been submitted to François Hollande during his five-year term, but he did nothing", regrets Brian Bouillon Baker, one of his adopted children, in an interview with France 24. However, lately, his relatives feel a real infatuation for the most French of Americans. "Many elected us [children, Editor's note] are asking more and more to inaugurate kindergartens, streets, squares, dance halls in his name, notes the latter. We are also contacted from abroad to inaugurate hotel rooms in his name, for interviews in the foreign press.There are even three films including a biopic and a big budget documentary in the works. There wasn't all this admiration about him thirty years ago. "
#ConseilEstEnsemble.
Unanimously, the elected inter-municipal officials decide to give the name of # JoséphineBaker, artist # committed, # resistant, symbol of # freedom, to the future conservatory of Pré Saint-Gervais.
👏🎵💃 pic.twitter.com/qQY5uGx17P
- Est Ensemble (@Est_Ensemble) May 25, 2021
For Laurent Kupferman, this growing passion can be explained by the modernity of the battles she led: "Joséphine Baker was a free and committed woman, feminist, resistant and an activist committed against racism and anti-Semitism. In a folded world. on himself where communitarianism and racism are exacerbated, his fight today finds a very natural resonance ".
Militant within the Licra
The whimsical singer was also the activist committed against racism. A victim of racial segregation when in the United States, she supports all anti-racist causes. In 1963, participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom alongside Martin Luther King. Dressed in her old war army uniform and her resistance medals, she is the only black woman to speak. In France, she campaigned within the Lica, which in 1979 became the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra).
The interpreter of "I have two loves" has much more in reality.
She is a loving mom who adopts twelve children of different origins and religions to shape the "rainbow family".
One way to realize its universal ideals.
"Our family was not just a utopia, assures Brian Bouillon Baker. Our mother wanted us to be different and united and in this she succeeded perfectly because today we are still so linked."
Josephine Baker and her husband Jo Bouillon walking with their adopted children, in 1956, in front of her castle in Milandes, in the Dordogne.
AFP
All of her children, who fully support the project, agree on one point: they refuse to have their mother's body exhumed from the family vault in Monaco. "Our mother lies with our father and one of his sons, near Grace of Monaco, whom she loved very much and who assisted her when she was ruined at the end of her life, so he is no question of moving it. " The transfer of the remains is indeed not obligatory to enter the Pantheon and the Baker clan pleads for a simple cenotaph raised in its memory.
But what would the person have thought of this initiative?
She would have had two reactions, understands the seventh child of the siblings.
"She would have been very proud of this honor of France just as she was very proud to wear her distinctions of Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in a military capacity, her Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 with palm, her medal of the Resistance ( with rosette) and her commemorative medal for voluntary service in free France. She would also have been very embarrassed to have such an honor done to her. She who was neither an intellectual nor a political leader, but a simple woman of goodwill meaning."
Joséphine Baker receives the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre with palm, on August 19, 1961 in her castle of Milandes.
© AFP
Joséphine Baker and Gisèle Halimi, same fight
While many public figures support the "Dare Josephine" campaign such as Jack Lang, Stéphane Bern, Nicoletta, Pierre Souchon, Marie-Paule Belle, Jean-Marie Perier, others - more rare - have some reservations. Joséphine Baker, dancing in the Nègre magazine with a belt of bananas around her waist, does not offer a sad caricature of racism, the most skeptical ask questions. "To tax it with serving racism is absurd, sweeps Laurent Kupferman with a backhand. We cannot watch this scene from yesterday with our glasses of the present. It is only a simple frenzied Charleston, not of a tribal dance. " And Brian Bouillon Baker to add, "these accusations are marginal, everywhere, we speak of her with kindness."
After bringing the writer Maurice Genevoix into the Pantheon on November 11, 2020, will Emmanuel Macron be seduced by Joséphine Baker to the point of making her "rest" under the prestigious dome? "We can think so in a reasonable way, risks thinking his 64-year-old son. We know that the president is sensitive to the fate of Josephine. He has already mentioned it during his speech on the 150 years of the proclamation of the Republic, precisely in the Pantheon. " One thing is certain, the president is the only one who can decide. At this stage, we know that he has already launched a consultation process around the entry into the Pantheon of the lawyer and activist Gisèle Halimi. But nothing prevents several entries. "Whatever happens, concludes Brian Bouillon Baker, even if she does not enter it,we have received so much sympathy, tribute and recognition from our mother that it is already a victory in itself. "
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