In St. Louis, an 11-year-old girl wanders around town on a spring evening. Her clothes were old, but her eyes were filled with light. Along the way, she saw a ruddy-faced man fall from a bar, another handed money to a woman, and a group of black musicians carrying their equipment into the club. She looked up at the streetlights lining the street, then walked to the wide, empty road, then jumped over it and started dancing.
As she recalled the race riots of 1917, melancholy cast a soft shadow on her face.
She closed her eyes and drifted to another time, another place...
Josephine is now a nineteen-year-old young woman standing in Paris. She has been married twice – at ages 13 and 15 – and has lived the life of a beggar in her teens, living in cardboard boxes and dancing for money. Eventually, she lay at the bottom of the entertainment industry before taking on roles on Broadway. Despite the sparkling mania that erupted in France as a star – trips to Europe, film roles, and admiration from famous figures like Picasso and Hemingway, her talent would be widely recognized in the 20s and 30s.
Over the next twelve years, she became not only a famous entertainer, but also a French citizen, and married again.
However, in the near future, the Second World War began.
At the beginning of World War II, her star power allowed her to be with Germans, Japanese and Italians, and even high-ranking dignitaries. Using the skills she acquired as an entertainer, she participated in ministries, embassies and clubs, earning their trust and the fascinating intelligence in their mouths, which she transmitted back to the French intelligence agency Deuxieme Bureau.
Yes, she is a spy.
In addition to gathering intelligence in the Axis countries, as an entertainer, she also had an excuse to travel. She visited neutral countries, obtained visas for those wishing to help the resistance, carried strategic intelligence about the Nazis, wrote in invisible ink on musical scores, traveled to England, and hosted British, French, and American troops on behalf of Free France without any government assistance.
When the war drew to a close, she received two medals and was awarded the title of knight (knight) of the Legion of Honor by Charles de Gaulle.
As life slowly returned to the new normal, Baker refocused all her energy on her career and regained new self-confidence. She re-established herself as one of France's preeminent entertainers and found a new career in the 1950s – the civil rights movement.
Throughout the decade, she wrote numerous articles in support of the movement, and when in the United States, she would refuse to perform for an audience in quarantine. In one such example in Miami, she declined an appearance that paid $10,000 (equivalent to more than $100,000 today) at a time due to the club's quarantine policy. Eventually, they relented and accepted her terms. Her persistence helped break down racial barriers in the audience, and she continued to rally for the cause even when threatened by her life.
The first black woman to appear in a big movie, a decorated resistance spy, a civil rights activist and a famous entertainer... This is Josephine Baker.