Josephine Baker - talent and a spy

 Today in Mighty Girl history, renowned jazz singer, actress, and dancer Josephine Baker was born in 1906. Baker is famously remembered as the first African American woman to integrate an American concert hall, star in a major motion picture, and become famous worldwide as an entertainer. She was also widely honored for work supporting the Allied cause during World War II as a spy for the French Resistance.

Baker was born into poverty in St. Louis, Missouri and lived on the streets for several years when she was a young girl. At 15, she began dancing in St. Louis vaudeville shows and soon set off for New York City to join Broadway chorus lines. Her dancing fame grew and she moved to Paris where her avant-garde and provocative shows became immensely popular. Baker soon became the most successful American entertainer in France and she eventually decided to settle there permanently.

During WWII, she helped spy for the French government by gathering information at high society events held at embassies. Her fame and performance schedule gave her an unusual ability to visit neutral nations during the war so she assisted the French Resistance by smuggling secrets written in invisible ink on her sheet music. Baker, whose husband was a French Jew, also helped many people in danger from the Nazis get visas to leave France. Toward the war's end, she performed for liberated prisoners at Buchenwald who were too weak to move. For her service to France during the war, she was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

Baker supported the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and spoke at the 1963 March on Washington along with Martin Luther King, Jr. She also refused to perform for segregated audiences. Baker's own family was very unusual for the time as well as she had adopted twelve multi-ethnic children from around the world, whom she referred to as the "Rainbow Tribe." When Baker passed away in 1975, she became the first American-born woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral.

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