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)
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)
