President Macron hails the American-born dancer and French resistance fighter as a symbol of unity in a time of sharp division.<\/b>
\nJosephine 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 Panth\u00e9on, the nation\u2019s 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 Panth\u00e9on, where Ms. Baker joined 75 men and five women, including the author \u00c9mile Zola, the scientist Marie Curie, and the resistance hero Jean Moulin. The colonnaded facade of the Panth\u00e9on, with its engraved dedication to the \u201cgreat men\u201d of France, was lit with a remarkable collage of images ranging from Ms. Baker\u2019s wild nights performing at the Folies Berg\u00e8res 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, \u201cI have a dream.\u201d Ms. Baker\u2019s 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 \u201cles ann\u00e9es folles,\u201d or crazy years, of 1920s Paris; and took her on to passionate political engagement in the cause of Europe\u2019s 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 \u201cevery form of courage and audacity,\u201d and \u201can American who found refuge in Paris and captured what it is to be French.\u201d Five months from a divisive presidential election, he portrayed Ms. Baker as a symbol of unity \u2014 what he called \u201cthe beauty of collective destiny.\u201d He held her up as an example of immigrant success, and of the multitudes a single life may contain. \u201cFrance is Josephine,\u201d 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 \u201cJ\u2019ai Deux Amours,\u201d or \u201cI Have Two Loves,\u201d perhaps Ms. Baker\u2019s most famous song, filled the frescoed mausoleum during the ceremony. Its avowal that Ms. Baker\u2019s heart went out at once to \u201cParis et mon pays\u201d \u2014 \u201cParis and my country\u201d \u2014 seemed to capture her unusual odyssey. At the time the song was recorded in 1930, Ms. Baker was still an American citizen. She became French in 1937,12 years after her arrival in France. She is the first person of American origin to be entombed in the Panth\u00e9on, a distinction that was marked by the lighting Monday of the Empire State Building in the red, white and blue of the French flag. \u201cShe had a double affection for the two countries,\u201d Ms. Baker\u2019s daughter, Marianne Bouillon-Baker, said at an American reception on the eve of the entombment. After the racial violence she witnessed as a Black American child and the repeated humiliations of segregation and discrimination, Ms. Baker, who was born Freda Josephine McDonald, said she found a freedom and dignity in France for which she was \u201ceternally grateful.\u201d Other Black American artists, including James Baldwin and Richard Wright, had similar experiences, with the result that France is particularly sensitive to American criticism that its avowedly colorblind social model masks widespread discrimination. Mr. Macron said that Ms. Baker\u2019s life had encapsulated \u201ca universal struggle.\u201d Her goal was not \u201cto define herself as Black before defining herself as American or French.\u201d Her guiding idea was not the \u201cirreducibility of the Black cause,\u201d but to be \u201ca free and dignified citizen, completely,\u201d he added. His words appeared to reflect his government\u2019s rejection of what it often portrays as divisive American identity politics that threatens to undermine French universalism. Mr. Macron\u2019s characterization of Ms. Baker\u2019s beliefs was consistent with his government\u2019s fierce defense of universalism. Still, her presence on the Mall with Dr. King and her repeated expressions of outrage at the treatment of Blacks in the United States make clear that the specific Black fight for equality was very important to her. Ms. Baker became an object of wild Parisian fascination when, just 20, she appeared in 1926 at the Folies Berg\u00e8res theater dressed in little more than a skirt made of 16 rubber bananas at a show called \u201cThe Negro Review.\u201d The cabaret played off white male colonial obsessions with Black women and their bodies in a France then fascinated by Black and African arts. Clowning and exaggerating, gyrating and waving her arms, Ms. Baker contrived to use and subvert the stereotypes, ridiculing them through what Mr. Macron called her use of the \u201cburlesque.\u201d Her fame extended far and wide; writers from Jean Cocteau to Ernest Hemingway fell under her thrall. But when artistic folly of the 1920s yielded to the Fascist military folly of the 1930s, Ms. Baker demonstrated that she did not take her success, or the gifts of her adoptive country, for granted. She joined the resistance. It was in her Free French uniform, hung with her various French military and civilian honors, that she appeared with Dr. King at the March on Washington. \u201cI have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.\u201d She exhorted the crowd to fight on. \u201cYou can\u2019t go wrong,\u201d she said. \u201cThe world is behind you.\u201d Gabriel Attal, the government spokesman, told Europe 1 radio that Ms. Baker was a \u201cmagnificent symbol who incarnates the love for France that can also come from people who are not born here.\u201d His statement seemed pointed at immigration, which remains an explosive subject in France \u2014 the main theme of the election, along with purchasing power at a time of economic difficulty. If Ms. Baker embraced France, many immigrants, particularly from North Africa, have found that much harder because of the prejudice they have encountered. Her reinterment came on the same day as \u00c9ric Zemmour, a hard-right polemicist and TV star with fierce anti-immigrant views, declared his candidacy for the presidency. Polls suggest he has significant support. Of Ms. Baker, Mr. Macron said: \u201cShe did not defend a certain skin color. She had a certain idea of humankind and fought for the freedom of everyone. Her cause was universalism, the unity of humanity, the equality of everyone ahead of the identity of each single person.\u201d<\/p>\n