The Monegasque sovereign thus took up the words of his mother, Princess Grace, of American nationality, such as Josephine Baker to whom "she offered her last home, a tomb in black granite from Africa", in which the artist rests in the cemetery of Monaco.
After her expulsion from the Château des Milandes, in the Dordogne, it was on the Rock that Joséphine Baker and her children settled in 1969, with the help of the princely couple.
Evoking "the courage of the granddaughter of slaves" as resistant during the Second World War, the sovereign underlined "the ideal of universal brotherhood and its corollary, the fight against racial segregation, of which Josephine is a symbol" .
Become a close friend of Princess Grace of Monaco, who had given up her acting career to marry Prince Rainier, Joséphine Baker then often performed in the Principality as "June 22, 1974 where she had replaced at short notice" , singer and actor Samy Davis Jr, for the inauguration of the new Summer Sporting, recalled Prince Albert again.
Joséphine Baker, born in the United States but who had adopted France as a second homeland, will enter the Pantheon on Tuesday during a ceremony chaired by Emmanuel Macron.
Her many children have decided not to move their mother's coffin from the Monaco marine cemetery, where she lies with her last husband and one of her children.
Even if a coffin will be carried for the celebration, it is therefore a cenotaph (tomb not containing the body) which will be installed in vault 13 of the crypt where the writer Maurice Genevoix, the last to enter the Pantheon, is already located.
Prince Albert explained that he would symbolically take a little Monegasque land: a land "which will enter the Pantheon tomorrow, mixed with that of Saint-Louis, his land of birth, with that of Paris, the land of its public, and to that of the Milandes, the land of his "rainbow" tribe.
© 2021 AFP