Icons Series: Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. Though originally born in St. Louis, Missouri, Baker later renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion, and given the level of success she reached in Paris. Josephine began her career as a dancer and is most famous for her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927. Her costume of a skirt made of artificial bananas and beaded necklace has become an iconic image replicated by many of your favorite entertainers today, including Beyonce. It is generally used as a reference to the Roaring 20s and Jazz Age.

Freda Josephine McDonald spent her childhood at 212 Targee Street. Local residents know it as Johnson Street in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Josephine's mother was married to Arthur Martin with whom she had a son and two more daughters. In order to help provide for her family, Josephine did laundry, and at eight years old began working as a live-in domestic. One woman was abusive towards Josephine, and even burned the child’s hands when the Baker had “put too much soap in the laundry.” By the age of 12, Josephine had dropped out of school to work as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur's Club. Though barely making ends meet, Josephine also spent much of her childhood sleeping in cardboard boxes, scavenging for food in garbage cans, and additionally making a living with street-corner dancing. However it was at the Old Chauffeur's Club where Josephine met Willie Wells, and married him at age 13. The marriage lasted less than a year and following the divorce, Josephine found work with a street performance group called the Jones Family Band after consistently badgering the show manager in her hometown. In 1921 at the age of 15, Josephine married Willie Baker but subsequently left him when her vaudeville troupe was booked into a New York City venue. They divorced in 1925, and it was during this time she began to see significant career success, and continued to use his last name professionally for the rest of her life. She performed in the chorus lines of the greatly successful Broadway revues “Shuffle Along” and “The Chocolate Dandies” at the Plantation Club, (known as Florence Mills’ “old stomping ground”). Baker’s role in the performance was to act in a comedic manner as if she did not remember the dance, until the encore where she would then perform correctly and with additional complexity and skill. Baker was at the time the "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville.” 

After 4 years, Baker left for Paris to open in La Revue Nègre in 1925, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This is where she received her first “big break” in the city. She became an instant sensation in Paris, known for her erotic dancing and appearing practically nude onstage. She then went on to tour all over Europe, but returned to France in 1926 to star at the Folies Bergère. This is where Baker performed the "Danse Sauvage" where she wore the iconic banana costume. In her later years of success, Baker was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah "Chiquita," who was adorned with a diamond collar. Frequently escaping into the orchestra pit, the cheetah would then terrorize the musicians, adding another element of excitement to the show.

Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the "Black Venus", the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess". After a while, Baker was the most successful American entertainer working in France. Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw." The author spent hours talking with her in Paris bars. Picasso drew paintings depicting her alluring beauty. Jean Cocteau became friendly with her and helped vault her to international stardom. During this period, Josephine also began her career in music and film. It was under the management of Abatino that Baker's stage and public persona, as well as her singing voice, were transformed. In preparation for her performances, she went through months of training with a vocal coach. In the words of Shirley Bassey, who has cited Baker as her primary influence, "... she went from a 'petite danseuse sauvage' with a decent voice to 'la grande diva magnifique' ... I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer."

Despite her popularity in France, Baker never attained the equivalent reputation in America. Time magazine referred to her as a "Negro wench ... whose dancing and singing might be topped anywhere outside of Paris.” Other critics targeted her voice claiming it was "too thin" and "dwarf-like". She returned to Paris in 1937, and married Jean Lion. Both the heartbreak of the criticism she faced in America, and her marriage to Lion contributed to Baker's decision to become a legal citizen of France and give up her American citizenship.

In the year of 1939, France declared war on Germany. Baker was then recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, a French military intelligence, as an "honorable correspondent". Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. Her fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats. She specialized in gatherings at embassies and ministries, charming people all the while gathering information to report back to the Bureau. When Germany invaded France, Baker left Paris for her home in the south of France. She housed people who were eager to help the Free French effort and supplied them with visas. As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe. She carried information for transmission to England, about airfields, harbors, and German troop concentrations. Her notes were written in invisible ink on the back of her sheet music.  In 1941, Baker went to the French colonies in North Africa to continue helping the Resistance. From a base in Morocco, she made tours of Spain. She pinned notes with the information she gathered inside her underwear. Josephine also began touring to entertain British, French, and American soldiers in North Africa for which The Free French had no organized entertainment network for their troops, so Baker and her entourage managed for the most part on their own. They allowed no civilians and charged no admission. After the war, Baker received the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle. Baker returned in triumph to the Folies Bergere with recognition of her wartime heroics.

In 1951 Baker was invited back to the United States for a nightclub engagement in Miami. After winning a public battle over desegregating the club's audience, Baker followed up her sold-out run at the club with a national tour. Rave reviews and enthusiastic audiences accompanied her everywhere, climaxed by a parade in front of 100,000 people in Harlem in honor of her new title: NAACP's "Woman of the Year.” However, after an incident at the Stork Club in 1951 interrupted and overturned her plans, Baker criticized the club's unwritten policy of discouraging Black patrons. She then publicly scolded columnist Walter Winchell, once an old friend, for not rising to her defense. Winchell responded with a series of harsh public rebukes, including accusations of Communism for which the ensuing publicity resulted in the termination of Baker's work visa, forcing her to cancel all her engagements and return to France. It was almost a decade before U.S. officials allowed her back into the country.

Although based in France, Baker supported the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. When she arrived in New York with her husband Jo, they were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial discrimination. Outraged by this treatment, she began writing articles about the segregation in the United States and refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. She was once offered $10,000 by a Miami club with a segregated audience, but turned them down, until the club eventually met her demands. Her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate live entertainment shows in Las Vegas which she then began to receive threatening phone calls from people claiming to be from the Ku Klux Klan to which she publicly responded that she was not afraid of them. In 1951, Baker made charges of racism against Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club in Manhattan, where she was refused service. Actress Grace Kelly, who was at the club at the time, rushed over to Baker, took her by the arm and stormed out with her entire party, vowing never to return. The two women became close friends after the incident.

Baker worked with the NAACP and her reputation as a crusader grew to such an extent that the NAACP had May 20th, 1951 declared "Josephine Baker Day.” In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of Martin Luther King Jr. and was the only official female speaker. While wearing her Free French uniform emblazoned with her medal of the Légion d'honneur, she introduced the "Negro Women for Civil Rights." Rosa Parks and Daisy Bates were among those she acknowledged, and both gave brief speeches. Not everyone involved wanted Baker present at the March; some thought her time overseas had made her a woman of France, one who was disconnected from the Civil Rights issues going on in America. In her powerful speech, one of the things Baker notably said was: “I have walked into the palaces of Kings and Queens and into the houses of Presidents… But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee…” After King's assassination, his widow Coretta Scott King approached Baker in the Netherlands to ask if she would take her husband's place as leader of the Civil Rights Movement. After many days of thinking it over, Baker declined, saying her children were "too young to lose their mother.”

After suffering through several miscarriages, Josephine developed an infection so severe it required a hysterectomy. The infection spread and she developed peritonitis and then sepsis. So during her work with the Civil Rights Movement, she began adopting children, forming a family she often referred to as "The Rainbow Tribe." Baker wanted to prove that "children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers." Baker raised two daughters, French-born Marianne and Moroccan-born Stellina, and 10 sons, Korean-born Jeannot, Japanese-born Akio, Colombian-born Luis, Finnish-born Jari, French-born Jean-Claude and Noël, Israeli-born Moïse, Algerian-born Brahim, Ivorian-born Koffi, and Venezuelan-born Mara.

In 1975, Baker was back on stage to star in a retrospective revue at the Bobino in Paris, Joséphine à Bobino 1975; celebrating her 50 years in show business. The revue, financed notably by Prince Rainier, Princess Grace, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, opened to rave reviews. Demand for seating was such that fold-out chairs had to be added to accommodate spectators. The opening night audience included Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli.

Four days later, on April 12, 1975, Josephine Baker was found lying peacefully in her bed surrounded by newspapers with glowing reviews of her performance. She went into a coma after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage and died at 68.