Home United States USA — Art Josephine Baker Becomes First Black Woman Interred in France’s Tomb of Heroes

Josephine Baker Becomes First Black Woman Interred in France’s Tomb of Heroes

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President Macron hails the American-born dancer and French resistance fighter as a symbol of unity in a time of sharp division.
Josephine Baker, born in Missouri and beloved of France, whose life spanned French music-hall stardom and American civil rights activism, became the first Black woman to be laid to rest in the Panthéon, the nation’s hallowed tomb of heroes. On a gray afternoon,46 years after her death in Paris, soldiers from the Republican Guard bore a flag-draped coffin up the red-carpeted stairs of the Panthéon, where Ms. Baker joined 75 men and five women, including the author Émile Zola, the scientist Marie Curie, and the resistance hero Jean Moulin. The colonnaded facade of the Panthéon, with its engraved dedication to the “great men” of France, was lit with a remarkable collage of images ranging from Ms. Baker’s wild nights performing at the Folies Bergères in 1926 to her appearance in front of the Lincoln Memorial beside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Aug.28,1963, as he spoke the words, “I have a dream.” Ms. Baker’s reinterment beneath the cupola that rises above Paris marked the culmination of an extraordinary journey that began in the misery and racial segregation of St. Louis; led her to fame as the provocative dance star of “les années folles,” or crazy years, of 1920s Paris; and took her on to passionate political engagement in the cause of Europe’s freedom from the threat of fascism and American racial equality. At a time of tension in France over issues of race and gender, and of friction with the United States, President Emmanuel Macron chose to honor Ms. Baker as a woman with “every form of courage and audacity,” and “an American who found refuge in Paris and captured what it is to be French.” Five months from a divisive presidential election, he portrayed Ms. Baker as a symbol of unity — what he called “the beauty of collective destiny.” He held her up as an example of immigrant success, and of the multitudes a single life may contain. “France is Josephine,” Mr. Macron declared, standing before the coffin. From the right to the left of the political spectrum, at least for a day, everyone seemed to agree. The longing cadences of “J’ai Deux Amours,” or “I Have Two Loves,” perhaps Ms.

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