She Left This Country And Reached The Most Unimaginable Height of Stardom

PushBlack
August 6, 2019

Josephine Baker may have been a French citizen when she died, but she was born Freda Josephine McDonald right in St. Louis, Missouri, to a family that struggled to make ends meet.

Her big break came right at the height of the “Roaring 20s,” when she joined an all-Black dance troupe in Paris - La Revue Nẻgre.

 

But it was Baker’s eye-popping numbers that introduced Black dance styles to Parisians - doing the Charleston wearing nothing but feathers, and her famous “Banana Dance” - that made her the biggest Black woman star in the world.

Josephine Baker was even a spy! Yes, she served during WWII for the French. Afterward, she came back to the United States to be a civil rights activist, refusing to play at segregated venues.

Baker revolutionized ideas about race, gender, and performance in ways that we still see to this day. We should always be reminded of those who paved the way for us, women like Josephine Baker.

We have a quick favor to ask:

PushBlack is a nonprofit dedicated to raising up Black voices. We are a small team but we have an outsized impact:

  • We reach tens of millions of people with our BLACK NEWS & HISTORY STORIES every year.
  • We fight for CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM to protect our community.
  • We run VOTING CAMPAIGNS that reach over 10 million African-Americans across the country.

And as a nonprofit, we rely on small donations from subscribers like you.

With as little as $5 a month, you can help PushBlack raise up Black voices. It only takes a minute, so will you please ?

Share This Article: