Joséphine Baker
(Saint Louis, 1906-Paris, 1975) French dancer and singer of North American origin.Joséphine Baker grew up in the period of the worst racist riots in Saint Louis.In 1922 she joined a dance company; a year later she was already in the chorus of the first colored play ever performed on Broadway, "Shuffle Along." Later she worked at the mythical Cotton Club.
Joséphine Baker
In 1925 he went to Paris as a member of the choir of La Revue Nègre.The European public fell in love with Joséphine Baker and became a star of Folies Bergière .He introduced Charleston to the old continent and starred in several successful films such as Le Siréne des tropiques , Zou or Princesse Tam-Tam , until the year 1935.Two years later she became a French citizen.
His stature as an artist is only comparable with his humanity and service to others, and proof of this is the life he led from 1939, when the Second World War broke out, integrating first in volunteering and more late in the French resistance, events that made her the recipient of the War Cross and the Legion of Honor, two important decorations from that country that she received from the French army and from Charles De Gaulle himself.
He did not settle in the United States after the war, although he traveled to his home country with some frequency, and in the 1960s he supported Martin Luther King's civil rights movement.Instead she preferably resided in France and created a large family with adopted children from different ethnicities.She returned to the stage from time to time, but only to support that large family.Just before one of those performances, he died in Paris in 1975.
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