Josephine Baker
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Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was one of the first African American women to gain international fame. An entertainer and an activist, she was the toast of Paris in the 1920s and 30s, and when she passed away, she received a state funeral.
Baker seems to have been born with star quality. Growing up in poverty in St. Louis (her mother was a maid, her father a musician), she quit school in the fifth grade, and at 12 she took up with a man in his 50s. A couple of marriages later, at 14, she joined a touring dance troupe and met Eubie Blake, who offered her a role in his successful Shuffle
Along. With her goofy antics, exaggerated clumsiness, and what would become her trademark eye-crossing, she stole the show.
But that was only the beginning. At the age of 19, while performing at the Cotton Club in Harlem, Baker was discovered by a talent scout and whisked off to Paris, where she created a sensation by appearing nearly nude onstage in La Revue Negre. It was a simple formula that worked: her audiences saw her as the embodiment of the colonialist's forbidden lust for the exotic "native." (The French always seemed to forget that she was American.) She went on to appear at such venues as the Casino de Paris and the Folies-Bergère, where she became famous for her scandalous banana skirt.
Baker was one of the first African Americans to discover a haven from racism in France. As her most famous song put it: "J'ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris" (I have two loves, my home and Paris). On the American stage she was cast as the bumbling minstrel; in Europe she could be a glamorous star. She would spend most of the rest of her life in France, becoming a citizen and working for the Resistance during World War II.
Empowered by her international celebrity, Baker refused to perform in segregated nightclubs in the United States, and led a widely publicized boycott of the Stork Club in New York. She continued to be active in the American civil rights movement throughout the '50s and '60s.
To demonstrate her commitment to interracial harmony, Baker adopted 13 children of different races and nationalities -- her "rainbow tribe" -- who lived with her on a farm in the south of France. Never a frugal spender, the project bankrupted her.
Baker was a complicated woman, flamboyant (she walked around Paris with a leopard), with a difficult personality and somewhat ambiguous politics. Despite her struggle for equal rights in America and her work for the French during the war, she was a supporter of Mussolini and Juan Peron. Her sexuality is also a source of speculation, though it's rumored that she had an affair with Greta Garbo, and once made love to her under the Eiffel Tower. She died in Paris in 1975, just days after the opening of Josephine, a comeback celebration of her 50 years in show business. Thousands came to say goodbye, and she received a 21-gun salute.
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