Inspirational Quotes by Josephine Baker (American Dancer, Campaigner)

Josephine Baker (1906–75,) originally Freda Josephine McDonald, was an American dancer, singer, actress, and civil rights activist. She was a star of the Paris cabaret music hall Folies-Bergère in the 1930s, and she was famed for her erotic danse sauvage and risqué clothing.

Born in St Louis, Missouri, Baker ran away from home at 13 to join a vaudeville company. She went to Paris in 1925 with La Revue Nègre, where her natural singing and dancing ability captured the attention of the French as an example of the African-American jazz scene. She subsequently starred in the films The Siren of the Tropics (1927) and Moulin Rouge (1935.) By this time, Baker had become the highest-paid cabaret entertainer in Europe.

Baker became a French citizen in 1937. During World War II, she worked for the Red Cross and the French Resistance, for which she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Resistance, and was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. Alter the war, she campaigned for civil rights in America and worked to prove there is “only one race.” She adopted 12 children from around the world to live with her in her French chateau, which she later tried to turn into a “Global Village.”

Baker’s life was dramatized in the television movie The Josephine Baker Story (1991) and was showcased in the documentary Joséphine Baker. Première icône noire (2018; Josephine Baker: The Story of an Awakening.)

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