From Screen Siren To Spy: How Josephine Baker Helped The Allies Win WWII
By Ty Ross
From the first time I saw her perform on television, I was enthralled with Josephine Baker. Not only was she extremely beautiful, but she had a way of captivating audiences with her talent and her voice as well. I admired her for being so strong, and fearless to perform in front of huge audiences and her boldness for being comfortable with her womanhood and sexuality. I was only a child, but it didn’t stop me from being inspired.
Born in St. Louis, Baker is most remembered for her risqué performances onscreen and in The Folies Bergeres in Paris, and of course the famed ‘banana skirt’ dance. She was the first black woman to star in a big screen production and had a long and amazing career. Mostly in her adopted home of France.
Baker didn’t have the best childhood in St. Louis. She had a contentious relationship with her mother that affected her until the day she died. Baker dropped out of school at 12, and by the age of 13 lived a life of vagrancy. Rummaging through dumpsters for food and supporting herself by performing on St. Louis street corners. She would soon get a job at the Old Chauffer’s Club where she met her first husband. Two years later she would be divorced and remarried at the age of 15. Baker soon caught the eye of a dance troupe that would bring her to Harlem during the peak of the Harlem Renaissance. Performing in shows on Broadway, she received acclaim and became even more popular. But Paris was calling, and off she went.
Baker was an instant sensation. She traveled around Europe, including Yugoslavia and Belgrade. Donating money to orphans. It’s widely known that Baker had a soft spot for orphans, as she adopted 13 herself. Looking back at her childhood, tenuous relationship with her mother and non-existent relationship with her father, Baker may have seen herself reflected in the kids she loved so much. A child without parents and family. So she created her own. She would take her kids with her when she traveled and toured to show the possibility of true unity among races and people.
Baker attempted to resurrect her career in the States but was met with a less than welcoming reception. Instead, contempt, discrimination and her performances panned. It pained Josephine, and she returned to France.
Hitler’s Mein Kampf had been published and the rise of fascism was sweeping across Europe. By the time Baker arrived, she found herself subjected to protests when she went to perform in Vienna, Austria. Thought to be the wealthiest black woman alive at the time, Baker was everything that Hitler found threatening to white supremacy and power. That she married a Jewish man did not make things better.
With WWII in full swing, she was soon approached by Jacques Atbey of the Deuxieme, a French Military Intelligence agency along the likes of the KGB, CIA and MI-5. Not long after she agreed, she fled Nazi occupied Paris for the South of France. It was at her chateau there that she took in refugees fleeing the Nazis and offered shelter to the resistance. She supplied resistance members with visas and helped Jews fleeing the Nazis obtain passports.
But she didn’t stop there. Josephine used her celebrity status to mix and mingle with Axis forces to gain intelligence. Including the Italian Embassy. She even spent time in Morocco to help the French Allies there. Used Embassy parties around Europe to gather information on German Troop locations and airfield and harbor occupations. Using her hands and arms to write down information and scribbling notes on paper that she pinned to her bra and panties. The Nazis would be alerted to the activities going on and paid Baker a visit to her chateaux. Thankfully, she was able to keep them from coming in where she was hiding resistance fighters. But it was too close a call for French General Charles de Gaulle. He told Josephine and Atbey they needed to leave France and go to London. With over 50 classified documents and intelligence secrets, Baker was able to smuggle the intel out under the guise of going on tour. If they checked her luggage they would find nothing, as she used invisible ink written over her sheet music.
Once D-Day liberated her beloved Paris, she returned. Selling whatever she had of value to feed the poor and those left on the streets in the war-torn city. Baker not only put her life at risk to help the Allies, she inspired the troops with performances, radio songs and comforting refugees at shelters. All of this work garnered her two of France’s top military honors, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. She was also given the Rosette de la Resistance (Rose of the Resistance).
Baker continued to perform and became an advocate for the Black American Civil Rights movement. Venues were forced to integrate as she refused to play for segregated audiences. The NAACP invited her to speak at the March on Washington in 1963. She was one of the only women asked and who did so. She did however decline Coretta Scott King’s request to speak after MLK’s assassination out of fear.
Josephine Baker was more than a singer, actress and performer. She was also a hero, advocate and philanthropist. The work she did on behalf of freedom and civil rights, both here and abroad is something we should all be inspired by. She went from performing near naked in bare feet and banana skirts, to going behind enemy lines during a time of peak fascism to help the Allies fight Hitler and win the war. She lived her final days in her beloved France. But as a black woman and American, I couldn’t be more proud of what she stood for and achieved.
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