A better world is possible

Joséphine Baker is one of the famous African American women of the 20th century. She rose out of the segregated slums of St        Louis, Missouri, where she was born on June 3, 1906, to become a leading star on the stage in Paris, France and around the world.  She developed a multifaceted show that entertained and astounded.  Baker, clad only in her banana skirt, became a sex symbol of the 1920s.  She was immortalised in an abstract painting by Paul Colin in 1927, one of her many lovers.  She also had a series of husbands.  Already in 1931 at 25 she was ‘Queen of the Colonies’ at the Expedition Coloniale Internationale. 

Joséphine Baker was befriended by heads of state, including President Charles De Gaulle of France and Juan Peron of Argentina.  She spoke out against Jim Crow, American racism, and became an exile and a French citizen. During World War Two she sided with free France against the Nazi occupation. She spent most of the war in Morocco, where what really happened to her there remains obscure.