Baker, Josephine (1906- 1975) US-born dancer

Baker, Josephine (1906- 1975) US-born dancer. Daughter of a Black washer-woman in St Louis, Baker was a flamboyant entertainer whose beauty and vivacious personality made her the toast of Paris in the late 1920s and 1930s.

She joined a touring company at 16 and made to Broadway, but her greatest success were reserved for Paris, where she joined La Revue Negre in 1925.

the Parisian audiences adored her exotic dancing, daring costumes and astonishing entrances and she took French citizenship in 1937.

At the height of her success, she was the highest paid entertainer in Europe. She was famed for her many eccentricities, which included walking a pet cheetah in public. During World War 2, she joined the French resistance and was later awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor.

Towards the end of her life she marched alongside Martin Luther King in the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s.