In the Roaring Twenties, Josephine Baker was known as the ‘Black Venus’ and ‘Creole Goddess’, but she had an invisible mettle to her that she revealed to the world in later years
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“I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens, and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ’cos when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world.”
It had been quite some journey for Josephine Baker - from the poverty of her troubled upbringing in St Louis, Missouri, to addressing a quarter of a million protestors at the March on Washington in 1963. On the way she’d found global fame as a dancer and actress. She’d renounced her homeland for French citizenship. And she’d played a significant, and highly decorated, role in the French Resistance during World War II. The March marked her latest opportunity to lend her profile to the Civil Rights Movement.