According to an aide to the President, the body of Josephine Baker will be moved to the Pantheon Mausoleum in November Emmanuel Macron.
This will make Baker born in Missouri in 1906 and buried in Monaco in 1975, becoming the first black woman buried in a sacred monument in Paris.
One of the members, Jennifer Gaston, told Agence France-Presse that on July 21, a collective campaign event including one of Baker’s sons met Macron. “When the President said yes, [it was a] Very happy,” she said.
“Pantheonization was established over a long period of time,” said one of Macron’s assistants.
Since 2013, the Baker family has been asking her to take office, and a petition has collected about 38,000 signatures.
The petition said: “She is an artist, the first black international star, the muse of Cubism, a resistance fighter in the French army during World War II, and actively participated in the civil rights struggle with Martin Luther King. “
Pascal Bruckner, another member of the campaign team, said Baker “is a France This is not racism, contrary to what some media groups say” and “true anti-fascists”.
The ceremony will be held on November 30th, on the same day Baker married Frenchman Jean Leon, allowing her to obtain French citizenship.
The Pantheon is a memorial complex of great national figures in politics, culture and science in French history.
Only the president can choose to move the remains to the former church in Paris, whose magnificent pillars and domed roof are inspired by the Roman Pantheon.
Of the 80 figures in the Pantheon, only 5 are women, including the last selected in 2018, Simone Ville, a former French minister who survived the Holocaust and fought for abortion rights.
