Josephine Baker: Jazz Star, WWII Spy, French National Hero

Josephine Baker was one of the most famous entertainers in the world when France fell to Nazi Germany in 1940. She was about to become one of its most effective spies.

A Star With Access

Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906. She moved to Paris in 1925 and became an overnight sensation - a jazz and dance star who packed venues across Europe. By the late 1930s, her fame gave her access most people could never dream of: embassy dinner parties, private meetings with diplomats, and the ability to cross borders without scrutiny.

When Jacques Abtey, head of French counter-military intelligence, recruited her in 1939, Baker answered without hesitation. "France made me what I am," she later said. She would risk everything to protect it.

The Spy Craft

Baker attended diplomatic receptions at the Italian and Japanese embassies, listening carefully and collecting intelligence - German troop movements, harbor activity, airfield locations. She wrote key details in invisible ink on her sheet music, knowing border guards would never subject a world-famous entertainer to a thorough search.

For smaller notes, she used a direct method: she pinned them inside her bra with a safety pin. She gave herself completely to the mission.

In November 1940, Baker and Abtey carried more than 50 classified documents to Lisbon, where British intelligence received them and flew them to London. Abtey posed as her secretary. Her trunks of luggage and assorted pets drew every official's attention - while the intelligence moved right through with her.

The Honors

After the war, General Charles de Gaulle personally awarded Baker the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Resistance, and named her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. She wore her medals on stage for the rest of her life.

In November 2021, President Emmanuel Macron presided over a ceremony at the Pantheon - France's mausoleum of national heroes. Baker was inducted as the first Black woman ever honored there, and the first American-born person to enter. A cenotaph bearing her name, containing soil from Missouri, France, and Monaco, was carried along a red carpet stretching four city blocks. Her remains stayed in Monaco at her family's request.

A Life in Full

Baker adopted 12 children from different countries, calling them her "Rainbow Tribe." She marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. She died in Paris in 1975 - four days after the standing-ovation opening night of her final show.