Paris will inter the remains of legendary entertainer Josephine Baker at its Pantheon monument. Baker is the first Black woman to receive the Parisian burial honor.
Baker died on April 12, 1975, in Paris and was buried in Monaco. French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to have a ceremony on Nov. 30 in which the country will re-inter the singer’s remains at the monument, reported Le Parisien.
Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906. An entertainer at heart, at the age of 15, she ran away from her family, got married, and ended up working the popular Vaudeville circuit until she moved to New York to be a part of the Harlem Rennaisance.
Sick of the racism that beset Black people in the United States, Baker eventually moved to Paris and enjoyed many years as a successful entertainer. Her stage show “Danse Sauvage,” where she performed topless with a banana skirt, is one of her most famous performances due to the masterful way she exploited 20th-century European fetishization of non-white bodies.
She served as a strong asset in WWII as Hitler came into power by assisting the French military. Baker passed on secrets she heard while performing in front of the enemy. She delivered the confidential information by writing with invisible ink on music sheets.
At the end of her career, she moved back to the United States and fought segregation with the NAACP.
“You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad,” Baker once said.
Josephine Baker is one of only five women whose remains rest at the Pantheon out of 79 people, and she will be the first entertainer.
