Josephine Baker: Did they forget?
1st July 2024 · 0 Comments
Dr. E. Faye Williams
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist
I listened to all the honors given in recent ceremonies at Normandy and surrounding events where many died serving in the military, risking their lives to save democracy. Maybe someone mentioned her, but I didn’t hear a single mention about Josephine Baker and the heroic and dangerous role she played, risking her life to protect others against the Nazis.
I, therefore, have chosen to write about this amazing woman. In this article I could never tell you all the things she did, but I’ve chosen to briefly let you know some. She may be best known as a dancer – but there’s another story that those who spoke on June 6, 2024 never mentioned.
First, it was Josephine who said “I did take the blows of life, but I took them with my chin up, in dignity, because I so profoundly love and respect humanity.”
Josephine was born June 3, 1906 and grew up in the slums of St. Louis, Missouri. Early in her life, she began to search for a way out. She married Willie Wells at the age of 13, but the marriage didn’t work out. In 1921 she married Willie Baker. That marriage also didn’t work out. After traveling until she arrived in Harlem, N.Y., she moved on to Paris at the age of 19. She became one of France’s most famous women.
She was beautiful, talented, fascinating, and concerned about humanity. She invented many dance acts, and it’s said she used her limbs in a way that made them look like they were made of rubber. She became so entrenched in French life that when she died in 1975, people lined the street to say goodbye and thank her for her accomplishments. She even received a 21-gun salute.
After being in France for many years, the war started. Using her fame and glamour as her cover, she was able to spy for the French Resistance against the Nazis.
As the war drums sounded across Europe in 1939, for France’s military intelligence service, she became an unlikely spy.
During WWII, she performed for both French and American troops. She served as a member of the French Resistance and represented much of what Hitler and the Nazis despised as she risked her life.
When the Nazis threatened the Jews across Europe, she rose to the occasion to help the Jews. Her work makes me wonder if those of our Jewish friends who continue to be so unkind to so many African Americans who speak out against bad U.S. policies – especially political leaders who work so hard for civil and human rights for all of us in America –yet risk defeat without recognition of all the issues on which we have historically worked together. It’s painful to see people like Congresspersons Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar and AOC, as well as many other good people who support as much as 90 percent of our mutual issues, be treated so unfairly because of their different views on a few things!
Upon further visits to the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, Baker willfully and publicly advocated for civil and human rights for all. We should take a lesson from her as she said, “The Parisians gave me their hearts, and I’m ready to give them my life.”
What drove her to take these risks was her hatred of discrimination against anyone. What a lesson we could take from Josephine’s life as a singer, dancer, actress, spy, civil rights shero and mother to a rainbow tribe of 12 children!
Let’s vote in our nation to save our democracy by working together to make things right that now seem to be encouraging hate and destruction for which so many like Josephine Baker have worked to change and make all of our lives better.
Dr. E. Faye Williams, President of The Dick Gregory Society.
This article originally published in the July 1, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
