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In a France still constrained by social conventions, a young Black woman danced as if the world belonged to her. Intellectuals, artists, and writers fall at her feet: Picasso sketches her, Hemingway admires her, and all of Paris vies for her smiles. She takes up residence at the Folies-Bergère, invents her famous banana dance, and records“ J’ ai deux amours,” which would become her anthem. Paris reveals to her what America had always denied her: the right to be a fully-fledged human being. She can walk into any restaurant, sit on any bench, look anyone in the eye. This obvious truth— which is not so obvious for a Black woman born in St. Louis in 1906— opens up an abyss of political consciousness that will never close again. She travels across Europe, learns languages, absorbs cultures, and notes in her memoirs this intuition about otherness that will be the guiding thread of her entire life: Every new country— whether we like it or not— enlightens and transforms, to some extent, the traveler who is open to unexpected impressions, sensitive to the secret song of a language and a landscape of souls they did not know. In 1937, she married the merchant Jean Lion and obtained French citizenship. This France she had chosen, she now embodied in her passport as well as in her heart. Two years later, war broke out. Josephine Baker would make a choice that would permanently alter the course of her destiny.
THE RESISTANCE · 1939 – 1945 The Spy in the Service of Free France
When Paris fell in June 1940, Josephine Baker took refuge at her château in Les Milandes, in the Dordogne. She heard General de Gaulle’ s appeal on the BBC and made her decision in a matter of seconds. She met with Jacques Abtey, head of military counterintelligence, and simply told him,“ I want to give myself to France. Do with me as you will.” This was no idle remark. She meant it. For five years, Josephine Baker would lead a double life of extraordinary daring: on stage, the enchanting star; in the shadows, the secret agent. She carried coded messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music, gathered intelligence during her tours in the Maghreb and the Middle East, met with enemy officials at social receptions, and passed the information on to the Gaullist services. Her status as an international celebrity was her best passport— no one suspected the dancer. She risks her life every day. In 1940, severe pleurisy confines her to bed for months in Casablanca; rumors of her death spread around the world. She picked herself up. She set out again.
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Flashmag! Edition 172 Mai 2026