Fantastically Terrible Podcast Ep23 with Miguel & Suzy

Fantastically Terrible Podcast Ep23: Josephine Baker Ooh La la!

From humble beginnings

Freda Josephine McDonald was born on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. “Her mother, Carrie McDonald, was a washerwoman who had given up her dreams of becoming a music-hall dancer. Her father, Eddie Carson, was a vaudeville drummer. He abandoned Carrie and Josephine shortly after her birth. Carrie remarried soon thereafter and would have several more children in the coming years. To help support her growing family, at age eight Josephine cleaned houses and babysat for wealthy white families, often being poorly treated. She briefly returned to school two years later before running away from home at age 13 and finding work as a waitress at a club. While working there, she married a man named Willie Wells, from whom she divorced only weeks later.

It was also around this time that Josephine first took up dancing, honing her skills both in clubs and in street performances, and by 1919 she was touring the United States with the Jones Family Band and the Dixie Steppers performing comedic skits. In 1921, Josephine married a man named Willie Baker, whose name she would keep for the rest of her life despite their divorce years later. In 1923, Baker landed a role in the musical Shuffle Along as a member of the chorus, and the comic touch that she brought to the part made her popular with audiences. Looking to parlay these early successes, Baker moved to New York City and was soon performing in Chocolate Dandies and, along with Ethel Waters, in the floor show of the Plantation Club, where again she quickly became a crowd favorite.” [more from Biography]

In the summer of 1925, Paris had a newfound obsession with jazz and anything exotic. People flocked to see Josephine Baker perform at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. As she descended from a palm tree wearing her now famous banana skirt, she became the biggest black female star in the world over night. Josephine Baker was so popular in France, she sold her own beauty products including Bakerfix hair pomade for that slick down look and even Bakeroil skin-darkening lotion all over Europe. Yes, indeed. European women were darkening their skin to look like their idol.

World War II Hero / La Résistante! 

“When World War II broke out, Baker joined the French Resistance, helping to smuggle out refugees and carrying messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music. She entertained troops and performed benefit concerts in North Africa and the Middle East.” [more from Black History Now…]

“In fact, her fame made her the perfect spy. When Baker would travel Europe while touring, she obviously had to carry large quantities of sheet music with her. What customs officials never realized, though, was that a lot of this music actually had secret messages written on it in invisible ink…On some occasions, Baker would smuggle secret photos of German military installations out of enemy territory by pinning them to her underwear. This invaluable intelligence work eventually helped Baker rise to the rank of lieutenant in the Free French Air Force, and when the war was over she received both the Croix de Guerre (a first for an American woman) and the Medal of the Resistance in 1946 from French General Charles de Gaulle“, who later became the President of France. [more from Mental Floss…]

War hero & Civil Rights Activist

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