Dancer, resistance fighter and activist Josephine Baker given French burial honour
The remains of performer Josephine Baker will be reinterred in the Pantheon monument in Paris. Photo: AP
Josephine Baker will become the first Black woman to receive France’s highest honour when the American-born singer and dancer’s remains are reinterred in the Pantheon monument in Paris.
French President Emmanuel Macron is organising a ceremony for November 30 at the Paris monument, which houses the remains of scientist Marie Curie, French philosopher Voltaire, writer Victor Hugo and other French luminaries.
Ms Baker was buried in Monaco, following her death in 1975, dressed in a French military uniform with the medals she received for her role as part of the French Resistance during the Second World War.
Ms Baker will be the fifth woman to be honoured with a Pantheon burial, and the first artist.
Josephine Baker to become the first Black woman buried in the Panthéon in Paris. https://t.co/8vEO2zvlPI
— Felicia A. Henderson (@FelHenderson) August 22, 2021
Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, one of France’s most revered politicians, was buried at the Pantheon in 2018.
The other women are two who fought with the French Resistance during the Second World War – Germaine Tillion and Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz – and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Marie Curie.
The monument also holds the remains of 72 men.
Born in St Louis, Missouri, Ms Baker became a megastar in the 1930s, especially in France, where she moved in 1925 as she sought to flee racism and segregation in the US.
Ms Baker quickly became famous for her dance routines and wowed audiences at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees and later at the Folies Bergere in Paris.
She became a French citizen after her marriage to industrialist Jean Lion in 1937.
During the Second World War, she joined the French Resistance.
Amid other missions, she collected information from German officials she met at parties and carried messages hidden in her underwear to England and other countries, using her star status to justify her travels.
A civil rights activist, she took part in 1963 in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom alongside the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, who made his I Have A Dream speech.