Josephine Baker: Dancer, activist and spy against the Nazis

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In Josephine Baker's memoir, "Fearless and Free" — an English translation (from the French) was published in February — she described the moment she left the United States as an unknown dancer in 1925.

"I was just a little showgirl — not even that, a little Black girl," she wrote. "I was finished with America. I had to start again." As the ship bound for France went out to sea from New York, she "felt the fear draining away … I was alive, I was free."

Baker had escaped segregated America and would soon light up Europe's greatest stages with her provocative cabaret performances, each injected with an uncompromising quest for self-liberation.

Soon known as the "Black Venus," she would later become a key part of the civil rights struggle in American alongside Martin Luther King. But before then, the celebrated performer become a thorn in the side of Nazi Germany as she spied for France and the Allies.

As recounted in "Josephine Baker’s Secret War: The African American Star Who Fought for France and Freedom," which was published this month, Hanna Diamond is the latest to recount Baker's brave stand against fascism as part of the French resistance.

Idolized across Europe

For 50 years, Baker danced and sang her way up from the slums of St. Louis all the way up to the great stages of Europe.

Legend has it that Josephine Baker received more than 1,500 marriage proposals. In 1927, the now-famous dancer made more money than any other entertainer in Europe. She was just 20 years old when she performed with the world-famous "Revue Negre" cabaret show in Paris, Madrid and Berlin.

Artists, actors and writers, many also exiled in Paris in the 1920s — including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Le Corbusier and Max Reinhardt — were smitten.

"The most sensational woman anyone ever saw," said Hemingway of Baker, also describing her "ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles."

Josephine Baker and male dancer on stage.

Race riots at home

Born Freda Josephine McDonald to an American mother in 1906 in the slums of St. Louis, Missouri, Josephine Baker was an illegitimate child for the times. Her father, a musician of Jewish descent, left the family when she was a child.

Josephine worked as a maid for a rich white family at a very young age to help support her family. When she was 11 years old, she witnessed the race riots in her hometown, in which white mobs killed almost 100 African Americans. That later influenced her work as a civil rights activist.

Baker would ultimately marry four times, the first time when she was 13. She married again two years later, another short-lived union. But she ended up keeping her second husband's last name, Baker.

The teenager worked as an assistant for a vaudeville troupe, helping dress the members. When a dancer fell ill, she seized her chance and performed on stage with the troupe.

She was ambitious and tenacious: At age 16, Baker danced as an understudy in a Black musical, followed in 1922 by appearances in a successful show called "Chocolate Dandies" that also toured to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The show was her ticket to Broadway, followed by Europe only a short while later.

Josephine Baker in one of her many elaborate costumes, ca. 1930.

A 'Black Venus' on stage

Wearing only a few feathers and a pearl necklace, Baker appeared in a cabaret program at the glamorous Theatre des Champs Elysees in Paris in 1925.

Her sensual eroticism, toned body and legendary Charleston dance swept audiences off their feet. Her "danse sauvage," in which she wore a short skirt made of 16 artificial bananas, became a signature performance.

Next stop: The famous Folies Bergere vaudeville theater, followed by a Europe tour that took the exotic dancer to capitals across Europe.

As Europe's recovering economy boomed after a devastating world war, roaring Paris hyped Josephine Baker as an an exotic sex symbol, a Black Venus.

Admirers showered her with expensive gifts and vows of love. Unmoved, the diva had countless lovers — male and female. Crowds went wild where she showed up. In Munich, Germany, however, she was banned from performing, or shows labeled a "violation of public decency."

Josephine Baker smiling and wearing a lot of jewellry and gloves.

But Baker, a respected star across Europe, faced racist hostility during a tour in the US — after her shows, she would have to leave the theaters via the service entrance.

In 1937, she married a French industrialist and became a French citizen.

Spy against the Nazis

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 and Nazi Germany's occupation of France fundamentally changed the life of Josephine Baker forever.

At first, she worked for the Red Cross and then became a spy for the French resistance movement.

In her tour luggage, Baker smuggled letters and secret documents across the border. At the end of the war, General Charles De Gaulle, who would later become French president, awarded her the French Legion of Honor.

Josephine Baker receiving the French Legion of Honor in 1961 in a black-and-white image

The 'rainbow family'

Josephine Baker and her husband lived at Les Milandes, a 15th-century castle in southwestern France. It became home for the 12 children of completely different origins who she adopted over the years — her "rainbow family."

Baker herself toured constantly and was hardly ever at home. She left the rearing of her children to her husband and nannies. In 1963, she joined the legendary March on Washington, marching alongside Martin Luther King to protest racism in the US.

Josephine Baker and seated in front of her 12 children on a bench.

She led a luxurious life, yet in the end Josephine Baker was heavily in debt.

In May 1968, her estate was foreclosed. By then, her then-husband had long since left her. Her friend, Monaco's Princess Gracia Patricia, otherwise known as Grace Kelly, ensured that Baker's children would be provided for by the Red Cross in the small principality.

In 1973, Baker staged a comeback at New York's Carnegie Hall, and a legendary show two years later at the Bobino Theater in Paris garnered her headlines once again.

But the aging diva could not live up to her earlier success. On April 12, 1975, she died of heart failure at the age of 68. Fifty years later, her artistic and activist legacy lives on.

This article was originally written in German. It was updated from one originally published in 2023.

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