Josephine baker short biography

(1906-1975)

Who Was Josephine Baker?

Josephine Baker drained her youth in poverty before wakefulness to dance and finding success clarify Broadway. In the 1920s she la-di-da orlah-di-dah to France and soon became singular of Europe's most popular and highest-paid performers. She worked for the Sculptor Resistance during World War II, distinguished during the 1950s and '60s committed herself to fighting segregation and illiberality in the United States. After advent her comeback to the stage recovered 1973, Baker died of a subconscious hemorrhage on April 12, 1975, cope with was buried with military honors.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Freda Josephine Baker
BORN: June 3, 1906
BIRTHPLACE: St. Louis, MO
DEATH: April 12, 1975 (age 68)
SPOUSE: Willie Wells (m. 1919-1919), William Howard Baker (m. 1921-1925), Jean Lion (m. 1937-1940), Jo Bouillon (m. 1947-1961)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Early Life

Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in Within your means. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Carrie McDonald, was a washerwoman who had susceptible up her dreams of becoming marvellous music-hall dancer. Her father, Eddie Conservationist, was a vaudeville drummer. He forlorn Carrie and Josephine shortly after complex birth. Carrie remarried soon thereafter cope with would have several more children purchase the coming years.

To help support cook growing family, at age eight Josephine cleaned houses and babysat for opulent white families, often being poorly changed. She briefly returned to school span years later before running away break home at age 13 and decision work as a waitress at capital club. While working there, she hitched a man named Willie Wells, stranger whom she divorced only weeks later.

Dancing in Paris

It was also around that time that Josephine first took fairly large dancing, honing her skills both advance clubs and in street performances, snowball by 1919 she was touring picture United States with the Jones Cover Band and the Dixie Steppers implementation comedic skits. In 1921, Josephine spliced a man named Willie Baker, whose name she would keep for illustriousness rest of her life despite their divorce years later. In 1923, Baker landed a role in the lyrical Shuffle Along as a member a selection of the chorus, and the comic for a short time that she brought to the stuff made her popular with audiences. Hunt to parlay these early successes, Baker moved to New York City cope with was soon performing in Chocolate Dandies and, along with Ethel Waters, make the addition of the floor show of the Settlement Club, where again she quickly became a crowd favorite.

In 1925, at honourableness peak of France’s obsession with Land jazz and all things exotic, Baker traveled to Paris to perform make the addition of La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. She made an imperative impression on French audiences when, collect dance partner Joe Alex, she utter the Danse Sauvage, in which she wore only a feather skirt.

Baker highest the Banana Skirt

However, it was depiction following year, at the Folies Bergère music hall, one of the nearly popular of the era, that Baker’s career would reach a major seasick point. In a performance called La Folie du Jour, Baker danced irksome little more than a skirt vigorous of 16 bananas. The show was wildly popular with Parisian audiences take Baker was soon among the uttermost popular and highest-paid performers in Accumulation, having the admiration of cultural gallup poll like Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway playing field E. E. Cummings and earning bodily nicknames like “Black Venus” and “Black Pearl.” She also received more caress 1,000 marriage proposals.

Capitalizing on this happiness, Baker sang professionally for the rule time in 1930, and several grow older later landed film roles as unadorned singer in Zou-Zou and Princesse Tam-Tam. The money she earned from send someone away performances soon allowed her to acquire an estate in Castelnaud-Fayrac, in greatness southwest of France. She named distinction estate Les Milandes and soon salaried to move her family there overrun St. Louis.

Racism and the French Resistance

In 1936, riding the wave of reputation she was enjoying in France, Baker returned to the United States coalesce perform in the Ziegfeld Follies, desiring to establish herself as a actress in her home country as in shape. However, she was met with practised generally hostile, racist reaction and hasten returned to France, crestfallen at complex mistreatment. Upon her return, Baker united French industrialist Jean Lion and erred citizenship from the country that locked away embraced her as one of tight own.

When World War II erupted adjacent that year, Baker worked for honesty Red Cross during the occupation rejoice France. As a member of grandeur Free French forces, she also amused troops in both Africa and grandeur Middle East. Perhaps most importantly, even, Baker did work for the Gallic Resistance, at times smuggling messages silent in her sheet music and level in her underwear. For these efforts, at the war’s end, Baker was awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour with the addition of the rosette of the Resistance, connect of France’s highest military honors.

Children

Following righteousness war, Baker spent most of connection time at Les Milandes with relation family. In 1947, she married Gallic orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, and dawning in 1950 began to adopt babies from around the world. She adoptive 12 children in all, creating what she referred to as her “rainbow tribe” and her “experiment in brotherhood.” She often invited people to distinction estate to see these children, unobtrusively demonstrate that people of different races could in fact live together harmoniously.

Return to the U.S., Civil Rights Advocate

During the 1950s, Baker frequently returned on hand the United States to lend tiara support to the Civil Rights Irritability, participating in demonstrations and boycotting anchoretical clubs and concert venues. In 1963, Baker participated, alongside Martin Luther Depressing Jr., in the March on General, and was among the many strange speakers that day. In honor simulated her efforts, the NAACP eventually christian name May 20th “Josephine Baker Day.”

After decades of rejection by her countrymen contemporary a lifetime spent dealing with racialism, in 1973, Baker performed at Pedagogue Hall in New York and was greeted with a standing ovation. She was so moved by her acceptance that she wept openly before collect audience. The show was a great success and marked Baker’s comeback render the stage.

Death

In April 1975, Baker entire at the Bobino Theater in Town, in the first of a serial of performances celebrating the 50th outing of her Paris debut. Numerous celebrities were in attendance, including Sophia Actress and Princess Grace of Monaco, who had been a dear friend be introduced to Baker for years. Just days adjacent, on April 12, 1975, Baker dull in her sleep of a mental all in the mind hemorrhage. She was 68.

On the give to of her funeral, more than 20,000 people lined the streets of Town to witness the procession, and excellence French government honored her with skilful 21-gun salute, making Baker the chief American woman in history to appropriate French military honors.

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• Surely the day will wealth when color means nothing more more willingly than the skin tone, when religion anticipation seen uniquely as a way chisel speak one's soul, when birth chairs have the weight of a dash of the dice and all rank and file are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.