Josephine BakerThis French-American civil rights activist, concert hall superstar, and World War II resistance hero has become the first black woman to enter the tomb of a respected historical figure in the French Pantheon-tensions over national identity and immigration issues Under the situation, winning the country’s highest honor is leading the presidential election next year.
The orchestrated ceremony on Tuesday-presided over by French President Emmanuel Macron-focused on Baker’s heritage As a resistance fighter, activist and anti-fascist, he escaped from apartheid in the United States in the 1920s, went to the Paris cabaret stage, and fought for tolerance and opposition to hatred.
Members of the French Air Force carried the coffin, which contained several handfuls of soil from the four places where Baker lived: St. Louis, the American city where she was born; Paris, her concert hall performance subverted the stereotypes of race and gender, making her a The highest paid performer of her time; she lives in the Milan castle in southwestern France; and Monaco, her last home. The coffin was placed in the tomb reserved for her in the basement of the Pantheon. Her family requested that her body be buried in Monaco, where she died in 1975 at the age of 68.
The projection outside the sacred Paris monument is reminiscent of scenes in Baker’s life. The Elysée Palace calls it “unbelievable” and describes her as an outstanding figure embodying the spirit of France. Macron’s office stated that this is an endorsement of Baker’s “lifetime commitment to the dual pursuit of freedom and justice.”
Macron said in a speech: “She always stood on the right side of history every time-she made the right choice, always distinguishing light from darkness.” He described in detail the racism of her childhood Violence MissouriAs a child, she had to serve a wealthy white family and was cruelly abused in order to provide food for her brothers and sisters. He praised her comedic genius in the Paris cabaret show for “deriding colonial prejudice.”
He said that during World War II, she “didn’t seek glory” to serve France. As a civil rights activist, “she defended the equality of all people and transcended personal identity.” Macron said that although he was born in the United States, “no one is more like a Frenchman.” Josephine Baker.
Baker was born in Missouri in 1906 and dropped out of school at the age of 13. As a child, he witnessed terrible riots and violence against black people, which resulted in the displacement of thousands of people. She later said that her birth city “has a terrible effect on me.” Like other African American artists who arrived in Paris at the time, she emigrated from the United States to escape apartheid. “I just can’t stand the United States. I was one of the first Americans of color to move to Paris,” she said Tell the guardian In 1974.
“The simple fact of letting a black woman enter the Pantheon is historically significant,” Pap Ndiaye, an expert on the American minority rights movement and a French black scholar, told the Associated Press. “When she arrived, she was first surprised, like so many African-Americans who also settled in Paris…no institutional racism. No segregation…no lynching. [There was] You can sit in a cafe, be served by a white waiter, you can talk to white people, [have a] Fall in love with white people,” Ndiaye said.
“This does not mean that racism does not exist in France, but racism in France is often more subtle and not as cruel as the form of racism in the United States,” he added.
Baker was only 19 years old when he arrived in Paris, and is known for her performances in concert halls, including the Charleston dance in the Folies-Bergere cabaret, where she wore a skirt made of fake bananas. France is a colonial power, and Baker’s daily work is now praised for subverting the colonial fantasy of black women and the stereotypes they have to face.
With the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of World War II, Baker quickly joined the anti-fascist struggle. In 1938, she had joined the group today known as Licra, a well-known anti-racism coalition. Since 1939, she worked for the French anti-Nazi counterintelligence service, joined resistance groups, and collected information especially from German officials she met at gatherings. As a spy for the French leader in exile, General Charles de Gaulle, she obtained information about the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and sent a report written in invisible ink on her music score to London. When this was an exception for women, she obtained a pilot’s license and became a lieutenant of the French Air Force’s Women’s Auxiliary Force and received a military medal.
“France made me who I am now,” she said later. “The Parisians gave me everything… I am going to give them my life.”
Later, as a civil rights activist, she was the only woman to give a speech in Washington before Martin Luther King Jr. in March 1963 “I have a dream” speech. She is wearing a French military uniform. In France, she also launched a fight against discrimination, adopted 12 children from different ethnic backgrounds and countries around the world, formed what she called a “rainbow” family, and grew up in her castle in the Dordogne region . She said she hoped their lives would show that “racial hatred is not natural. It is a human invention.”
Baker will be the sixth woman to be honored in the secular temple of the “Great Men” of the French Republic. She is the fourth person of color to be commemorated in the Pantheon after the three: Felix Eboue, the Governor of French Equatorial Africa who entered in 1949; the author Dumas, who entered in 2002; and the poet who entered in 2011 And the statesman Aimé Césaire.
The ceremony was held on November 30th because that was the date Baker chose to acquire French citizenship through marriage, which is her wedding day. Since then, the process of obtaining French citizenship has become more difficult.
The ceremony was led by Macron, who chose to bestow Baker France’s highest honour after many years of petitions by her supporters and family — a move seen as a political symbol of France’s role as an inclusive society. The debate before the presidential election next spring has been dominated by hard-line statements about national identity and immigration.Far-right TV commentator Eric Zemo, He was convicted of inciting racial hatred, Declared He will run for president to “save” France from being destroyed by immigrants.
Macron’s office stated that a complete political consensus was reached around her honor, which marked France’s general love for Baker.
A few days after celebrating her last smashing song and dance performance on stage in Paris for half a century, Baker died of a cerebral hemorrhage. She once told a French TV interviewer: “I don’t like the word hatred… We didn’t come to earth for this, but more for mutual understanding and love.”
