(Paris) Franco-American Joséphine Baker on Tuesday became the first black woman to enter the Pantheon, the French “secular temple of the Republic”, during a ceremony chaired by President Emmanuel Macron who will celebrate a life “under the sign of the quest for freedom and justice ”.
It is to the sound of Here I am Paris again, one of the most famous songs of the artist, that the cenotaph (tomb not containing the body) of Josephine Baker, carried by aviators, entered the Pantheon, before being installed in one of the vaults of the crypt .
The artist’s remains will remain in the Monaco marine cemetery, not far from the tomb of Princess Grace, who had supported her in the last years of her life.
Under the watchful and moving eye of eleven of her children, many politicians, artists and citizens, the icon of the Roaring Twenties, born in 1906 in the United States before adopting French nationality, thus became the sixth woman on 80 illustrious characters to be welcomed in this neo-classical building in the heart of Paris, and whose pediment proclaims “To great men, the grateful homeland”.
It is on this same pediment and on the facade of the building that images of his life were broadcast, to the enthusiastic applause of the public who heard, once again, the voice of the artist presenting himself as ” a person adopted by France ”. And when a journalist at the time asks him why he chose the Resistance against the Nazi occupation, Mr.me Baker answers soberly: “to defend the person”, “human dignity”.
His entry into the Pantheon comes 46 years after his death, on April 12, 1975 at the age of 68, three days after having celebrated his golden anniversary on the stage.
“World-renowned music hall artist, committed to the Resistance, tireless anti-racist activist, she was involved in all the fights that bring together citizens of good will, in France and around the world […]. She is the incarnation of the French spirit, ”greeted the French Head of State earlier.
Interest is also marked internationally with many journalists from foreign media accredited for the ceremony.
With the atypical star, Emmanuel Macron breaks the codes by widening the somewhat rigid profile of the French “pantheonized”, mostly statesmen, war heroes or writers: Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, the resistant Jean Moulin, Marie Curie… An unexpected choice which succeeded in winning the consensus of the entire political class, five months before the French presidential election.
Counter-espionage
Born in misery in the United States, the young woman fled segregation and settled in France. She delights the All-Paris by dancing the Charleston, topless, in an unleashing of drums-jazz. At the Folies Bergère cabaret, the “Ebony Venus” plays on colonial fantasies by performing dressed in a simple belt of bananas, alongside a living panther.
The first song she performed, I have two loves … My country and Paris, in 1930 at the Casino de Paris, consecrates it.
Naturalized French in 1937 by marrying a Jewish industrialist, the star used her musical talent from the first months of the conflict to entertain French soldiers on the front lines. And take advantage of the receptions to which she is invited in embassies and foreign countries to gather intelligence.
“It is France which made me what I am, I will keep an eternal recognition for it”, she argues while agreeing to serve the counter-espionage of the Free French Forces. She transmitted to London hidden reports in sympathetic ink in her scores, which earned her the Medal of the Resistance and the Croix de Guerre.
Engaged in North Africa in the Air Force, Joséphine Baker landed in Marseille in October 1944. In May 1945, she performed in Germany in front of deportees released from the camps.
“Our mother served the country, she is an example of republican and humanist values”, but “she always said:” I only did what was normal “”, explained AFP her eldest son, Akio Bouillon.
All the rest of her life, she fights against discrimination. With her fourth husband, she becomes the mother of a “rainbow tribe” of 12 children adopted from all over the world, whom she raises in her castle in the Dordogne.
In 1963, in Washington, she spoke after Martin Luther King and his famous ” I have a dream “. This march for the civil rights of black Americans was the “happiest day of his life,” said the star.