35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Super Hero JOSEPHINE BAKER

Josephine Baker

Vital. Exuberant. Flamboyant. Sensual. All these words fail to adequately describe Josephine Baker, the internationally famous singer, comedienne, and dancer known not only for her almost nonexistent costumes in Paris revues but also for her battles against racism. In a 1975 interview, Baker said she was never a great artist, but she was a woman who believed in art and the idea of international brotherhood so much that she put everything she had into them. 

Baker was born Freda Josephine MacDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis. Her family was so poor she had to leave school briefly at the age of eight to help support them. Baker was first married at age 13 to Willie Baker, then she joined a band and traveling show. While still in her teens, she became a chorus girl in Shuffle Along at Radio City Music Hall at age 16, performed on Broadway in 1924, then joined La Revue Negre in 1925, which brought le jazz hot to Paris—the city she would love for the rest of her life. 

It was in Paris that Baker's sensuality and rhythm made her a star. She first performed wearing only a pink flamingo feather, then she joined Les Folies Bergere to dance topless wearing a string of fake bananas. The smooth-skinned chanteuse took Paris by storm, walking her pet leopard Chiquita, who was wearing a diamond collar, down the Champs-Elysees. The painter Picasso waxed rhapsodic about her "smile to end all smiles," and poet Langston Hughes collected her pictures and newspaper clippings. 

Baker began singing professionally in 1930 and went on to star in films and open her own nightclub in Paris. She became a French citizen in 1937, but World War II sent the woman dubbed "La Perle Noir" (The Black Pearl) by her fans down quite a different career path. 

Some say Baker entertained more U.S. and Allied soldiers on the front lines in North Africa than Bob Hope, though she received no recognition for it in America. She also volunteered as an ambulance driver for the French Resistance. After Germany occupied France, Baker did underground intelligence work and was rewarded by the French Government with the Legion of Honor. 

She returned to the stage after the war but devoted much of her energy to raising what she called her "Rainbow Tribe," a group of 12 orphaned children of different nationalities. Baker called it an "experiment in brotherhood," and she moved the children into Les Milandes, a 15th-century chateau. Baker retired in 1956 to raise the kids full time, but financial problems forced her to return to the stage in Paris Mes Amours, a musical based partly on her own life. 

Baker said in 1951 that her greatest desire was to see her people happier in America. She refused to perform in segregated venues and, in 1963, flew in for the historic March on Washington. Later that year she performed at a civil rights benefit at Carnegie Hall. 

Baker, who had said she wanted to die at the end of a dance, died in Paris in April 1975 after performances celebrating the 50th anniversary of her arrival in Paris.

From Great African Americans.  Copyright, Publications International, Ltd.