On June 3, 1906, Freda Josephine McDonald was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother was Carrie McDonald but the truth about her biological father is not as clear. Her birth certificate identifies Eddie Carson, Carrie McDonald’s partner at the time, as Josephine’s father however there is evidence to suggest otherwise. Carrie McDonald, a woman of African and Native American descent, was admitted to an exclusively white women’s hospital a month before Josephine was born and was discharged two weeks later. It is suspected that Carrie had become pregnant while she worked for a German family and therefore Josephine’s father remained anonymous due to his status as a well-off white man who could pay for the anonymity. Despite this paternity suspicion, Eddie Carson never treated Josephine as if he were not his biological daughter. He and Carrie performed wherever they could to earn money and even began including Josephine in their act as a baby. After Carrie and Eddie split, Carrie and Josephine were always poor which forced Josephine to learn how to navigate the world on her own to make money. Carrie eventually married Arthur Martin and they had three more children together, Arthur, Marguerite, and Willie. In order to help support the growing family, Josephine began work as a live-in maid for white families where she was subjected to abuse. At the age of 12 years old, Josephine had to quit school to work full-time. A year later, she quit working as a domestic worker and waitressed while living out of cardboard boxes on the street and eating food from the trash. While she was working, she met a man named Willie Wells whom she married that year. The marriage only lasted a few months and she began performing with a group of street performers called the Jones Family Band.
Baker performed with the Jones Family Band allowing her to tour the United States at the age of 15. She visited New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and became part of Broadway chorus lines for Shuffle Along (1921) and The Chocolate Dandies (1924). Baker never shied away from the spotlight and earned herself the title as “the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville” by outshining the other’s in the chorus line by making herself unforgettable to the audience. She would pretend that she forgot the dance and do so in an exaggerated manner until the audience asked for an encore which is when she would perform the dance both correctly and uniquely. She also employed blackface in her early performances which her mother disapproved of further straining their relationship.
On September 22, 1924, Baker lands in Paris France where she finds her home and superstardom. She starred in La Revue Nègre over a year later. That same year she performed her infamous “Danse Sauvage” in which she wear no clothes and opts for a string skirt made of bananas instead. She drew attention from Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, E. E. Cummings, Jean Cocteau, and more for her dancing. Baker was not just a dancer, she also dabbled in film acting. She eventually starred in The Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934), Princesse Tam Tam (1935), and Fausse Alerte (1940). Her career as a singer began around her early acting years and her most successful song was released in 1931. This song was “J’ai deuz amours” which means “My Two Loves” which she says she loves both her country and Paris. Baker underwent six months of rigorous vocal training which elevated her singing abilities and landed her the lead in the opera La Créole. Baker tried to achieve an equivalent amount of success in America by starring in Ziegfeld Follies in 1936 on Broadway but after her sales fall, she was replaced and retreated back to Paris where she finally became a French citizen in 1937.
Although she was at the peak of her success to date, she chose to get involved in the French war efforts. She was a sub-lieutenant for the Women’s Auxiliary Force and worked for the Red Cross. She was eventually recruited by French military intelligence to be a spy for the French government. She would perform for Axis soldiers where she would learn of military tactics and report them back to the French. She would also smuggle photos of camps and messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music either in her luggage or attached to her underwear. Due to her fame, she was almost never searched by travel security and was never suspected of any spy efforts when she travelled around the world. Her status enabled her to speak with Japanese, Italian, and German army officials with no suspicion. She used her Les Milandes estate to house the French Resistance and help supply visas to those in need. At the conclusion of World War II, Baker was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Résistance, and made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.
Along with being a war hero in France, she was also involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. She fought hard for desegregation efforts by refusing to play for segregated audiences, establishing an anti-segregation clause in her contract, and was involved with various Civil Rights Organizations. She was the first person to desegregate the casinos in Las Vegas although the Rat Pack’s Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. are mainly credited for doing so. In 1951, she was denied entry to countless restaurants and hotels such as the Stork Club in New York City. After bringing this incident to the public eye, she was put on the FBI’s watch list and her U.S. citizenship was revoked for over ten years. When she finally returned to the United States, she arrived in August 1963 for the March on Washington. She gave a speech in her French Air Force uniform and credited various women’s efforts for civil rights. Later that year, Baker put on a concert to raise funds and support for the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE. The NAACP appreciated Baker’s efforts enough to officially name May 20th as Josephine Baker Day as well as name her Most Outstanding Woman of the Year. She was even approached by Coretta Scott King after her husband was assassinated to be the new leader of the Civil Rights Movement but Baker declined in order to continue being an active mother.
Baker was married four times over her 68 years of life. Her first marriage lasted a few months in 1919 when she was 13 years old. She then marries Willie Baker in 1921 but they divorce in 1925. During this time, she is beginning to earn her fame which is ultimately why she keeps his name after the divorce in order for her to maintain her brand. She marries her third husband, Jean Lion, in 1937 and they divorce three years later. In June of 1947 she marries Jo Bouillon. This marriage lasted about ten years before they divorce in 1957.
During her marriages, she struggled with conceiving children. In 1942, she suffered a miscarriage that required her to get an emergency hysterectomy. She began to adopt children in 1950 and by 1975, she had adopted twelve children. She purposely adopted children of different races and religions in order to prove to the world that racial and religious harmony can exist. She took this idea as far as to have her children perform for visitors at their home and be watched while they played together. The Rainbow Tribe, as she called them, consisted of two daughters, Stellina (Morocco), Marianne (France), and ten sons, Akio (Japan), Jeannot (Korea), Luis (Colombia), Jean-Claude (France), Noël (France), Moïse (French), Jari (Finland), Koffi (Ivory Coast), Brahim (Algeria), and Mara (Venezuela). After she divorced her last husband and she had to foreclose her Les Milandes estate, she sent some of her children away to live with their adoptive father, to boarding school, and even to live with one of her fans.
Over the course of Baker’s life, including during her many marriages, she had several relationships with women. During her second marriage, Baker had an affair with Clara Smith who was a famous blues singer. Baker was going by Freda Baker at the time but Smith eventually convinced her to use Josephine instead. While performing in dance groups across the United States, Baker had affairs with Evelyn Sheppard, Bessie Allison, and Mildred Smallwood who were all performers with Baker. Ada “Bricktop” Smith was another one of Baker’s mistresses. Smith was known for her dancing, singing, and her famous saloon, known by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck. The French novelist, Colette, was also one of Baker’s lovers however Baker did not like how openly she flaunted her lesbian affairs. Finally, Frida Kahlo is perhaps Baker’s most notable lovers. The two met in 1939 when Kahlo was in France for an exhibit for her art. The women share many biographical similarities, it is no surprise they took a liking to each other. Both Frida and Josephine were strong-willed women who did not depend on any man in their life financially, struggled with fertility and health issues, and were self-taught artists in their own respects. Despite having such well-known women as her mistresses, Baker did not want this part of her life to be shared with the rest of the world. She seemed almost disgusted by it at some points in her life like when she had an affair with Colette. When she found out her son, Jari, was gay when he was 15, she publicly reprimanded him and out of fear that he would spread it to his nine other brothers, she sent him to live with his father.
Both Kahlo and Baker died of a health-related issue. Kalho died in 1954 of a pulmonary embolism while Baker died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1975. On April 8, 1975, Baker starred in a retrospective revue about her life at the Bobino in Paris. Her star-studded audience gave her a standing ovation and she received rave reviews for her performance. Four days later, on April 12, Baker was found dead on her bed surrounded by articles complimenting her life and performance. She was given a French Military burial.
Josephine Baker led a unique life full of excitement, struggles, successes, and novelty. She grew up impoverished but rose to be one of the wealthiest black women of her time. She was a determined woman who fought for freedom in more ways than one. She used her status as a platform and made her voice be heard. She envisioned a world in which everyone was equal in terms of racial and religious equality. However, she did struggle with her own contradictions. She wanted racial equality yet performed as a caricature of black Americans for white audiences in her early years. She fought for equality on so many fronts but when she found out her son was gay, she shunned him, despite being bisexual herself. No person is perfect and each of her twelve children have differing opinions on her as both a mother and a person which appears to be quite fair considering that Baker wore many different hats during her life. She was a singer, dancer, actor, wife, mother, civil rights activist, and French spy/war hero. Everything she did was sensational, earning her the title of many firsts. She was the first African American woman to achieve global fame, the first African American woman to be the lead in a movie (ZouZou, 1934), the first woman to be given France’s highest medals of honor for her war efforts, the first American woman to be given a French Military burial, and one of the first wealthiest African Americans in the world. Josephine Baker’s influence is still seen today in clothes, hairstyles, music, and even celebrity egocentrism. Her iconic presence throughout the 20th century helped to cement the importance of both women and African Americans in international history.