Born in 1906 into a poor family in Missouri, in a country riddled with segregation, nothing predestined Josephine Baker to become a feminist icon celebrated in Paris and ”beyond the seas.” A dancer, singer, revue leader, and resistance fighter, she remained true to her commitment to universalism and her fight against racism.
While Paris is inseparable from the Eiffel Tower and Edith Piaf, what would the City of Light be without Josephine Baker’s ultimate declaration of love in the song “J’ai Deux Amours”? Yet the freedom-loving artist who made a name for herself in the French capital with her exotic charm and her playful and scandalous dances was American by birth.
While she could have turned a blind eye to her fellow human beings, Josephine Baker used her fame to support just causes, from fighting the Nazi occupation in her adopted country to campaigning for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King.
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of this inspiring woman, who, entering the Panthéon on November 30, 2021, joined such illustrious figures as Simone Veil, Marie Curie, and Germaine Tillion.
Modest beginnings
If Josephine Baker fascinates people on both sides of the Atlantic, it is primarily because her story is as much an example of a committed personality as it is of the American Dream, having succeeded in rising through hard work, daring, and tenacity. In her case, it is even a story of “rags to riches,” as Americans say.
Freda Josephine McDonald was born on June 3, 1906, into a very poor family in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, who was of African-American and Native American descent and the daughter of a slave, was a musician and dancer. Her presumed father was a white itinerant street musician of Spanish origin who abandoned the family without acknowledging the child when Josephine was just one year old.
Her mother then married a laborer with whom she had three children.
Raised in harsh conditions, Josephine was forced to alternate between school and working as a domestic servant for wealthy white families who saw her more as an animal than a human being. The money she earned was used exclusively to feed her siblings, of whom she was the eldest. Nevertheless, little Josephine was able to endure such a situation thanks to her love of dance and her desire to become a star.
At the age of 13, she left school and entered into her first marriage, which lasted only a few months.
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Featured photo: Josephine Baker in 1936
