In 1961, she received a Legion D’Honneur, France’s highest decoration for military service, for her Spain and Morocco mission, and was commended for retrieving “precious information.”
Josephine Baker — shown here receiving the Legion D’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre on August 19, 1961 — would also receive admission into the Pantheon in 2021, one of only five women to earn a place there.Born in St. Louis in 1906, Josephine Baker moved to France at 19. She emigrated with the hope of leaving the racism that hindered her American aspirations behind.
Ten years later, Baker’s face adorned the cover of a 1937 brochure denouncing decadent artists issued by Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party. That same year, Josephine married the Jewish industrialist Jean Lion. Her passion to fight against the Nazis — and to defend her adopted country and husband, as well as herself — grew to a fever pitch. In 1938, she declared that Nazis were criminals and “criminals need to be punished.
When the war came to France in 1940, Josephine’s glamorous country home — the Château des Milandes in the Dordogne region — became a base of operations for the local members of the resistance, as well as refugees, including a Belgian Jewish couple whom Baker sheltered there.A radio transmitter was installed on the tower for contact with Britain, and the cellar was filled with weapons for the resistance.
Born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in Saint-Louis, Missouri, Josephine Baker obtained French nationality in 1937.Throughout the war, she worked with “Berber leaders, Rif chiefains [from the Northeastern region of Morocco], Arab dignitaries, American troops both black and white, Vichyites, plus the Free French forces.” Even as her friends were murdered by Nazis or sent off to concentration camps, Baker maintained her cool.
“She would never forget the lesson of the war years: freedom must be fought for, every day,” writes Lewis.
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