For the 50th anniversary of death
Josephine Baker: Dancing against hate
She danced in the banana skirt, risked her life as a spy and fought tirelessly against racism: Who was Josephine Baker? 50 years after her death, she remains groundbreaking.
October 1925. A woman enters the stage of the Paris Théâtre des Champs-élysées. She wears almost nothing. Your body moves like jazz: untamed, electrifying, full of force. The audience rages. The critics are enthusiastic. The next day her name is on everyone’s lips: Josephine Baker.
Fifty years after her death on April 12, 1975, at the age of 68, she is much more than just a dance legend. She is considered a freedom fighter, resistance fighter, icon of the queer movement and ambassador of diversity – and even as a national heroine since 2021.
On November 30, she was the first African -American woman to be taken to the Paris Panthéon, France’s fame stamp – side by side with sizes such as Victor Hugo, Voltaire or Marie Curie.
Who was the woman who danced for freedom?
She was born as Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri. Your childhood: poor, hard, racist. At the age of eight, she worked as a domestic help, saw the houses of her district burning, people who looked like her, gelynched on trees. They shaped these experiences. And they let them swear: that they would not only fight for themselves, but for the freedom of everyone.
The stage was her first weapon – the humor, the second. When she emigrated to Paris in the mid -1920s, she found something of recognition for the first time in her life. She became a star, the “Queen of the Wild Dance”. Her “Banana Dance” – between provocation, self -authorization and satire – made her world famous. And to the icon of a generation that wanted to free itself from the meaf of colonialism.
Between erotic and emancipation
Her wide belt, on which plush bananas hung, became her trademark – and a provocative symbol between erotic and emancipation. At a time when France moved between colonial heritage and cultural openness, Baker hit the nerve of the zeitgeist.
She played with exotic clichés, made fun of racist stereotypes. Her appearances were not only spectacle, but statements: a celebration of self -authorization and cultural change.
She risked her life for a free Europe
But Josephine Baker wanted to be more than entertainer. When she married Jewish industrialists Jean Lion in 1937, she accepted French citizenship. And when the Second World War began, it joined French resistance. Not just symbolic.
She used her prominence and freedom of travel as a celebrated dancer to transport secret messages in resistance to the Nazi regime. And their concerts at the front did not serve fame, but morality – and served as income to the Résistance.
After the war, Josephine Baker reinforced the fight against racism and discrimination. In the historical march on Washington for work and freedom in 1963-a key moment of US citizens’ rights movement-she stepped on the microphone in the uniform of the Free French forces.
She was the only woman to score the floor in front of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. Her speech was a passionate outcry against injustice: she had entered the palaces of kings and presidents, “but in America I was not even allowed to drink coffee in a hotel”.
Her private life was also a statement. She loved men, she loved women – open and confident. And it adopted twelve children of different origins and religion. Her “rainbow family” was not an image maintenance, but a vision lived.
“I wanted to prove that people of different skin colors, cultures and religions can live together – such as brothers and sisters.” Today Baker is also celebrated as an early queer icon.
Heldin in France, love letters in Berlin
In 1926 she also brought her wild rhythms to Berlin. In her memoirs she later wrote: “Berlin, that’s great! A triumphal procession. You are wearing me on hands. In no other city I got so many love letters, flowers and gifts.”
But on her second visit in 1929, the political climate had changed. Nationalist leaves rushed against them, they called a “semi -monkey”. After three weeks she left over the falling.
Baker died a few days after her last big show in Paris on April 9, 1975. 46 years later, the highest honor followed: the picture in the Panthéon. In his commemorative speech, President Emmanuel Macron praised her as a “fighter, an artist, a woman who not only defended the black people – but humanity.”
Why your legacy counts more than ever today
She was a dancer, spy, activist, mother, lover. And in everything – uncompromising. At a time when old enemy images return and become socially acceptable again in many countries, their life remains a guide: for courage, diversity and the unshakable conviction that the world can be changed – even with plush bananas.
dpa
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
