Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American-born dancer, singer, and actress whose distinguished career was centered primarily in France. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 French silent film Siren of the Tropics, the first to perform with an integrated cast at an American concert hall, and one of the first African American entertainers to achieve acclaim both in movies and on the stage. In 1923, she joined the chorus in a road company performing the musical comedy Shuffle Along and then moved to New York City, where she advanced steadily through the show Chocolate Dandies on Broadway and the floor show of the Plantation Club.
In 1925, she went to Paris to dance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in La Revue Nègre and introduced her danse sauvage to France. During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris.
She became an iconic symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era. She renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after marrying French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. During the German occupation of France, Baker worked with the Red Cross and the Résistance. As a member of the Free French forces, she entertained troops in Africa and the Middle East. She protected resistance fighters at her chateau, providing them with visas, and also turned to espionage, bringing military information to Britain written in invisible ink on her music scores.
In 1945, General Charles de Gaulle awarded Baker the Croix de Guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance, and he named her a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. She was also awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation. After the war, her focus shifted to Les Milandes, her estate in southwestern France, from which she began in 1950 to adopt babies of all nationalities in what she defined as “an experiment in brotherhood” and her “rainbow tribe.” She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, and made notable contributions to the American civil rights movement. In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington, alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as the only official female speaker at the event.