Paris (AFP)
The Franco-American artist Joséphine Baker (1906-1975), a prominent figure in the Resistance and the anti-racist struggle, will enter the Pantheon on November 30, we learned in the entourage of Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, confirming a information from the Parisian.
The ceremony will make the famous journalist, born in Missouri and buried in Monaco, the first black woman to rest in the secular necropolis.
"On July 21, President Macron granted us an interview," entrepreneur Jennifer Guesdon, one of the personalities defending pantheonization, told AFP, and "when the president said yes, (it was a) great joy and at the same time it was obvious, ”she added.
"It is yes!", Said the Head of State at the end of this interview with a group of personalities who came to plead in favor of this file, Le Parisien reported on Sunday.
Among them besides Mrs. Guesdon, the novelist Pascal Bruckner, the singer Laurent Voulzy, the essayist Laurent Kuperman and especially Brian Bouillon-Baker, one of the sons of Josephine Baker, according to the daily.
The president's entourage confirmed to AFP that the ceremony would take place on November 30.
"Pantheonization is built over the long term," the same source pointed out.
A petition in favor of the performer of the famous song "J'ai deux amours" was launched two years ago by Laurent Kupferman.
"This request for pantheonization has been made by the Baker family since 2013," says Jennifer Guesdon, and the petition has "almost 40,000 signatories".
This "symbolizes the image of a France which is not racist, contrary to what a certain number of media groups say, Josephine Baker is a real anti-racist, a real anti-fascist", Pascal Bruckner reacted to AFP .
The date of November 30 corresponds to that of his marriage to Jean Lion which allowed him to obtain French nationality, explained Ms. Guesdon.
"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 Lica (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 of the petition.
Joséphine Baker poses at Harcourt studios in the 1920s in Paris - AFP / Archives
For more than a century, the Pantheon has been the secular necropolis of French "great men", whose memory "grateful homeland" wishes to honor.
Among the 80 "pantheonized" there are only five women, including Simone Veil, the last personality to have been, in 2018.
laf-jri-ggy-mlb / cg / shu
© 2021 AFP