Josephine Baker’s childhood shaped by struggle
Josephine Baker, born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, was a far cry from the glittering Parisian cabarets that would later define her career!
The daughter of a laundress and a vaudeville drummer who abandoned them, Josephine grew up in poverty and worked as a domestic servant from the age of eight. Instability and the constant threat of racial violence marked her childhood. The East St. Louis race riots of 1917, which she witnessed as a child, profoundly affected her and forged her future commitment to justice and equality.
Yet, from a very young age, Josephine also possessed an unwavering zest for life and a gift for the stage. She danced in the streets for a few coins, using movement as a form of escape and expression. As a teenager, she joined a vaudeville troupe and aspired to more: a stage where her talent could transcend the barriers that held it back.
A star is born in Paris
When Josephine Baker arrived in Paris in 1925 to perform in La Revue Nègre, the French capital was buzzing with intense creative energy.
It attracted artists, writers, and musicians from around the world and offered a haven for African American artists fleeing segregation in the United States. Paris was hungry for novelty, and Josephine’s exuberant personality and audacious style made her an instant sensation.
Her performance in the now-legendary “banana skirt,” a costume made of artificial bananas and almost nothing else, became both iconic and controversial. For European audiences, she embodied a vision of the modernity, rhythm, and exoticism of the Roaring Twenties. But Josephine understood the power of this image. She used it to challenge stereotypes, ridicule them, and turn the colonial gaze against itself. Behind the spectacle was an artist who was in complete control of her art and her message!
Paris welcomed her not only as a performing artist, but also as a symbol of liberation. Her face appeared on posters, in films, and on the walls of cafés. Her radiant smile and incomparable energy captivated audiences from Montmartre to the French Riviera. More importantly, France offered Josephine what her own country had denied her: dignity. As she later recounted, “I was free in Paris. I could walk into any restaurant, sit at any table, and stroll down any street without fear.”
Josephine Baker became French
Josephine Baker’s love affair with France was not merely sentimental; it became legal and political. In 1937, she married Jean Lion, a French industrialist, and obtained French citizenship. But her decision to become French went far beyond mere convenience or romanticism. For Josephine, it was a sense of belonging, a conscious choice to unite with a nation that had accepted her when others had rejected her.
She was fully aware of the contradictions inherent in France’s colonial legacy, but she deeply believed in its ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. France represented for her the possibility of a universal human community, an idea she would strive to realize throughout her life. Her citizenship also marked a turning point in her public life. She was no longer just an artist; she was a citizen with responsibilities, a patriot ready to defend her adopted homeland.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Josephine Baker’s loyalty to France was severely tested. Refusing to flee, she joined the French Resistance, using her fame and mobility to gather intelligence for General de Gaulle‘s Free French Forces. She entertained the troops, attended receptions at embassies, and smuggled secret messages, written in invisible ink within her sheet music. Her Château des Milandes in the Dordogne became a nerve center of the Resistance and a haven for those seeking refuge. Her heroism during the war earned her several of France’s highest honors: the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Résistance, and later, the Legion of Honour. General de Gaulle personally decorated her for her courage and service.
To the world, she was a renowned artist; For the Resistance, a valuable spy, a woman who risked her life out of love for her adopted country.
Josephine Baker’s Rainbow Tribe
After the war, Josephine Baker’s fame endured, but she devoted much of her energy to humanitarian causes. In the 1950s, as the world grappled with racial tensions and the Cold War, Baker conceived a remarkable social experiment: the creation of a “Rainbow Tribe.”
At her Château des Milandes, she adopted twelve children of diverse ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, including Japanese, Finnish, Algerian, Venezuelan, and French, hoping to demonstrate that people of all races could live together in harmony. She raised them as brothers and sisters, teaching them that their differences were a source of strength, not division.
She invited tourists to visit her home to show them her vision in action. To some, it seemed utopian or theatrical; to others, profoundly idealistic. Yet her intention was sincere: to use her fame as a message of unity. She once said, “I adopted my children because I wanted to show that all races and all religions can live together. We are proving it.”
The Rainbow Tribe was not without its challenges. The upkeep of her estate was exorbitant, and her finances eventually collapsed. In 1969, she lost Château des Milandes, driven to the brink by debt. But even then, she never gave up on her dream of a world without prejudice. She continued to perform well into old age to support her children and the causes she held dear.
Bittersweet visit to America
In the 1950s and 1960s, Josephine Baker returned to the United States basking in international acclaim. But her return was tinged with bitterness. Despite her worldwide fame, she encountered the same segregation and racism she had fled decades earlier. Hotels refused to accommodate her, and clubs in the South rejected her performances.
Instead of withdrawing into herself, Baker became a committed voice in the American Civil Rights Movement. She refused to perform before segregated audiences and stood alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington, where she was the only woman to speak officially. Dressed in her French military uniform, adorned with Resistance medals, she declared to the crowd: “You are on the verge of total victory. You cannot go wrong. The world is behind you.”
At that moment, she embodied both her French and American identity, the artist who had found freedom abroad but who had never stopped fighting for justice throughout the world.
Legacy of a woman who chose to belong
Josephine Baker died in 1975, just days after a triumphant show in Paris celebrating her fifty-year career.
She received French military honours at her funeral, a rare distinction for a civilian artist. Thousands of people lined the streets of Paris to pay their final respects to the woman who had become not only an icon of show business, but also a symbol of courage, resilience, and love.
In 2021, France honoured her again by interring her remains in the Panthéon, the final resting place of the nation’s greatest heroes. She became the first black woman and the first person born in the United States to receive this honour. Her coffin, draped in the French flag, symbolized the country’s gratitude and the enduring nature of her chosen identity.
In his tribute, President Emmanuel Macron described her as “a fighter who championed both the beauty of freedom and the universality of humanity.” It was a fitting recognition for a life that transcended the boundaries of race, nationality, and art.
Wikimedia Commons: JB wearing her banana skirt by Lucien Waléry (1863–1929) PD by age (Walery died more than 70 years ago) is Public Domain – JB in uniform by Studio Harcourt is Public Domain – JB with her Rainbow Tribe by Hugo van Gelderen (ANEFO) is CC0 – JB in the Pantheon by JipéDan – site Facebook is CC BY-SA 3.0 – Poster by Zig (1882–1936) is Public Domain
