Josephine Baker (1906-1975)
Filed under the name Josephine · April 29, 2026
I had a student once, back in the seventies, who could sing the paint off a wall and never got the chance this country owed her — Josephine Baker's story always makes me think of her. Baker left the segregated South of the mind, if not quite the place, and became a star clean across the ocean in France, of all things, when her own country wasn't ready to see her fully. She danced, she sang, and when the war came she didn't sit it out — she worked for the French Resistance, which took a spine I don't know I'd have had. Later they laid her to rest in the Panthéon, an honor about as high as France gives anybody. I think about how far a person has to go sometimes just to be seen plain. My students who had to work twice as hard for half the credit always come to mind with a story like hers. She earned every bit of it, and then some, the long way around.