The Inimitable Josephine Baker

Josephine Freda MacDonald was born in St. Louis, Missouri on June 3, 1906, to Carrie MacDonald, a part-black and part-Native-American woman, and Eddie Carson, of black and Spanish ancestry. When her father abandoned them, the family was left destitute. Josephine, at the age of eight, had to work cleaning houses and babysitting for wealthy white families.

She ran away from home at the age of thirteen and found work as a waitress in a club. There, at the same age, she met and married her first husband, whom she divorced soon after. 

Young Josephine had always loved dancing and performing, so when the opportunity to join a travelling band arose, she quickly accepted the offer, though she was considered too young and skinny to be a chorus girl and often had to take non-performing parts. At the age of fourteen, she married William Howard Baker, whose last name she kept, though their marriage dissolved after four years.

Her big break came in 1925, in France, during the explosion of interest in American Jazz on the European continent. She opened in the “La Revue Negre” at the Theatre des Champs- Elysee and became a huge hit, famous for her uninhibited performances and scanty costumes. Her fame grew and among her fans were Christian Dior, Grace Kelly, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 She returned to America in 1936, but was not well-received. Infuriated by the racial discrimination she encountered, such as being barred from hotels and refused service in clubs and restaurants, she returned to Paris after renouncing her American citizenship.

The Second World War opened the most interesting period of her life. She used her fame as a cover to gather intelligence for the French underground. She carried sensitive documents and messages to neutral countries, sometimes using invisible ink on sheet music. She rose to the rank of lieutenant in the Free French Air Force and, after the war, was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Légion d’Honneur and the Rosette de la Résistance.

Her personal life was also out of the ordinary. Men fell madly in love with her and she received approximately 1,500 marriage proposals. She married four times, but had no children of her own. Rather, she adopted twelve orphans, from different parts of the world, whom she called her ‘Rainbow Tribe,’ to show that children of different colors and nationalities could live together.

In the Fifties and Sixties, Baker frequently returned to the United States to fight racism. She participated in demonstrations and boycotts of segregated clubs and concert venues. In 1963, she joined Martin Luther King Jr. in the famous March on Washington, and became one of the notable speakers at the event. In honor of her efforts, the NAACP eventually named May 20th “Josephine Baker Day.”

In 1973, she performed at Carnegie Hall, after decades of rejection and racism. Greeted with a standing ovation, she openly wept in front of the audience. The success of the event marked her comeback on the stage. 

On April 12, 1975, Baker died in her sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 68. More than 20,000 people lined the streets of Paris to witness the funeral procession and the French government honored her with a 21-gun salute, making Josephine Baker the first American woman to be buried in France with military honors.

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanashtakala.com) is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)