Josephine Baker was a global celebrity, fashion icon, entertainer, and American civil rights activist who stood alongside Martin Luther King during the March on Washington in 1963. Like King, Baker had a dream.
“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,” she told the crowd. “And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ‘cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world.”
Syndicated gossip columnist Walter Winchell heard it too. Winchell, a staunch supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, accused Baker in print of harboring ‘communist sympathies’. Her US visa was revoked, returning her to France. The FBI, once the recipient of Baker’s wartime intelligence gathered on behalf of the French Resistance, opened a Bureau dossier on her. The French spy was now an FBI target.
Still, Josephine Baker, the mouse that roared, kept opening her ‘big mouth’.
Josephine Baker was a global celebrity, fashion icon, entertainer, and American civil rights activist who stood alongside Martin Luther King during the March on Washington in 1963. Like King, Baker had a dream.
“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,” she told the crowd. “And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ‘cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world.”
Syndicated gossip columnist Walter Winchell heard it too. Winchell, a staunch supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, accused Baker in print of harboring ‘communist sympathies’. Her US visa was revoked, returning her to France. The FBI, once the recipient of Baker’s wartime intelligence gathered on behalf of the French Resistance, opened a Bureau dossier on her. The French spy was now an FBI target.
Still, Josephine Baker, the mouse that roared, kept opening her ‘big mouth’.
Josephine, born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, moved from the US to France at the age of 19 to perform in adance cabaret and never left. She renounced her US citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion.
At the height of her success, Josephine could be seen walking the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah Chiquita, both of them draped in pearls. Although she married four men throughout her lifetime, Josephine was bisexual and had several relationships with women including blues singer Clara Smith. Maude Russell, a performer who once shared the stage with Baker, later said, "The girls needed tenderness, so we had girl friendships, the famous lady lovers… I guess we were bisexual, is what you would call us today."
Baker may have been a bikini-clad erotic dancer who headlined at the Folies Bergère - as well as being the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, Siren of the Tropics - but beneath this glamor she had nerves of steel, helping to bring down the Nazis during World War II.
Josephine was known for her banana bikini skirt and pearls
Spying for the French Resistance
While in Europe, Josephine came into contact with Jacques Abtey, head of French counter-military intelligence. He recruited spies to help resistance efforts against the Nazi occupation. Josephine was the ideal candidate. Her celebrity status allowed her to move easily between countries and offered her enhanced protection.
Josephine was confident in her connections - powerful men who could not deny her charms. For a long time, no one suspected her of espionage.
Josephine reportedly carried secret messages on behalf of the French Resistance to British and American Allies. She wrote secrets on her hands and arms, smuggled documents in her lingerie, and used invisible ink to incorporate intelligence in her sheet music.
Josephine Baker lived in constant danger
The spying game
Josephine lived in constant danger and was almost arrested several times, including when Nazis came to her home for an impromptu search. However, she easily charmed them, making them forget about the basement where several members of the Resistance were hiding. Had she been caught, Josephine faced imprisonment in a concentration camp, or worse.
As it was, she smiled her famous smile - she was at the time the most photographed woman in the world - and the secret documents in her possession stayed snugly in place in her clothing, secured by a safety pin, according to Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis.
As her history unfolded, Josephine Baker became one of the most successful African American performers in French history, a WWII spy and activist who used her incredible platform to change the world.
Josephine Baker with her cheetah Chiquita
Legion of Honor
She refused to accept money for her espionage work and sometimes had to sell her jewelry to help finance excursions. Her glamorous country home, the Château des Milandes in the Dordogne region, was a base of operations for members of the French Resistance, as well as refugees who sheltered there.
After the war, Josephine returned to Germany to perform for survivors of the Buchenwald death camp: “She would never forget the lesson of the war years: freedom must be fought for, every day,” Lewis wrote.
After WWII, Baker was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.
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