Beyond the Trivia-Josephine Baker

One of the popular subjects of this Black History Month is Josephine Baker, an entertainer born in the U.S. in 1906. Baker was an exotic dancer and a cabaret performer who became a French citizen and was the headline act of the Folies Bergere in Paris. She was also the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture in 1927. Baker died in 1975 but is still well remembered in her adopted nation, France. Today's trivia question involves four statements. One of the four is false. Which one? 1. Josephine Baker grew up in Missouri. 2. She took part in Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963. 3. She helped the French resistance during the German occupation of France in World War II. 4. Baker is buried in the Pantheon in Paris, a mausoleum dedicated to France's most beloved citizens.

Answer:

Born as Freda Josephine McDonald, Baker grew up in poverty in St. Louis. She never knew who her father was. She played in the railyards by Union Station and was deeply affected by the 1917 race riots in East St. Louis. So the first statement is true.

Baker moved from New York to France and found that she didn't suffer discrimination in France. But, even as a major star, she continued to face issues of race whenever she returned to the United States. Baker was active in civil rights her whole life and refused to perform before segregated audiences. And she was a participant in the March on Washington, the only female speaker at the event. After King's assassination, Coretta Scott King asked Baker if she would take her husband's place as leader of the civil rights movement. After days of considering it, Baker declined, saying her children were "too young to lose their mother".

Josephine Baker married a Frenchman and became a French citizen in 1937. During World War II she socialized with German officials, who enjoyed her company, but she was gathering information that she passed along to leaders of the French resistance. She is often described not only as a French entertainer but as a World War II spy.

That only leaves the final statement as the false one. Baker became a friend of Princess Grace of Monaco and Grace provided Baker with a home when Baker encountered financial hardships. On April 8, 1975, Baker opened in a revue celebrating her 50 years in show business. It was financed by Prince Rainier, Princess Grace and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Four days later, Baker was found lying peacefully in her bed surrounded by newspapers with glowing reviews of her performance. She had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. She died that day and was buried in Monaco.

Just last year French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Josephine Baker would be given the ultimate French honor of being re-buried in the Pantheon in Paris, but Baker's family said her remains would stay in Monaco. Instead, a symbolic funeral was held last November at the Pantheon and a vault there is marked with a plaque in Josephine Baker's honor. Her coffin contains soil from the United States, France and Monaco.