Josephine Baker

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald, naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent and civil rights activist.

Quotes

• I have stage contracts for the next 18 months, and I shall go on with them whatever he says.
  • Her response to a reporter when asked about comments made by her third husband, French financier Jean Lion, that she was going to retire, The Chicago Defender 17 Dec 1937

• France made me what I am. I will be grateful forever. The people of Paris have given me everything. They have given me their hearts, and I have given them mine. I am ready, captain, to give them my life. You can use me as you wish.
  • To the French Intelligence officer Captain Jacques Abtey, offering to become an agent of the Resistance (The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy by Peggy Caravantes

• First, I want to do what I can to help win the war and thus perform whatever duty I can for my native land. Second, I want to help those of my own race. I am doing all I can to help win the war effort and to make people generally more appreciative and kinder to my race.
  • On why she was performing for Allied troops against doctor's orders, Atlanta Daily World 25 Jul 1943

• I cannot see that I did anything extraordinary to merit this honor. Everything was just as it had to be."
  • On receiving the Resistence Medal for her work on behalf of France during World War II, 1949 (Josephine Baker’s Secret War by Hanna Diamond)

• I want you to know that this is the happiest day of my entire life. And as you all must know, I have had a very long life and I'm sixty years old. The results today of seeing you all together is a sight for sore eyes. You're together as salt and pepper just as you should be. Just as I've always wanted you to be and peoples of the world have always wanted you to be. You are a united people at last because without unity there cannot be any victory. You see, I'm glad. I'm glad that in my homeland, in my homeland where I was born in love and respect, I'm glad to see this day come to pass. This day, because you are on the eve of complete victory, and tomorrow, time will do the rest. ... Continue on. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
  • From her address to the March on Washington, 28 Aug 1963

• I believe in action. … I believe in doing rather than talking. All my life I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice. This is why I traveled all over the world to adopt 11 youngsters.
  • "Jo Baker helps civil rights groups : Renowned star 'deeply concerned', Jet Vol. 25, No. 19 (27 February 1964), p. 60

• Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.
  • Josephine (1977), Ch. 16 of memoirs written with assistance of Jo Bouillon; also in Women's Words: The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women (1996) edited by Mary Biggs, p. 146

Quotes about Baker

She became part of the hearts and minds of French people. ~ Emmanuel Macron

• Josephine Baker is a St. Louis washwoman’s daughter who stepped out of a Negro burlesque show into a life of adulation and luxury in Paris during the booming 1920s. In sex appeal to jaded Europeans of the jazz-loving type, a Negro wench always has a head start. The particular tawny tint of tall and stringy Josephine Baker’s bare skin stirred French pulses. But to Manhattan theatre-goers last week, she was just a slightly buck-toothed young Negro woman whose figure might be matched in any nightclub show, whose dancing and singing could be topped practically anywhere outside France.
  • "The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan," TIME, 10 Feb 1936

• She broke down barriers … She became part of the hearts and minds of French people ... Josephine Baker, you enter the Pantheon because while you were born American, deep down there was no one more French than you.
  • Emmanuel Macron, as quoted in "Josephine Baker is the first Black woman to be inducted into France's Pantheon", NPR (30 November 2021)