IN HISTORY: Josephine Baker 1906-1975 Her Activist Side

by Dwight L. Quinn

Josephine Baker supported the American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950's while living in France. Mrs. Baker and her husband Jo when they arrived in New York she was refused reservations at 36 hotel because she was Black.She was so taken back by this racist treatment that she began writing articles on the segregation in the United States and held Public talks about this problem. Fisk University in Nashville, Tennesssee the all Black University was were she gave a talk, the subject was,"France, North America and The Equality Of The Races In France".
Mrs. Baker also went as far as to refuse to perform for segregated audiences this
couragous act by Mrs Baker later helped to intergrate shows in places like Las Vegas. She began recieving threats from the Klu Klux Klan after these accident but the threats didn't rattle the nerves of Mrs.Baker.
In 1963, Mrs. Baker spoke at the March on Washington at the side of Martin Luther King,Jr.
Mrs. Baker was the only official female speaker, she wore her Free French uniform
emblazoned with her medal of the Legion d'honneur she introduced the Negro Women for
Civil Rights. She acknowledged Rosa Parks and Daisy Bates who both later gave speeches.
Dr. Kings widow Coretta Scott King approached Mrs. Baker after the assassination of Dr.
King,to ask her if she would take her husband place as leader of the Civil Rights Movement,
but Mrs. Baker declined.
Josephine Baker's reputation as a Civil Right Activist grew to an extent that the NAACP
had Sunday May 20th,1951 declared as Josephine Baker Day. She was presented with life
membership of the NAACP by Nobel Peach Prize winner  Dr. Ralph Bunche. The honor she was
paid caused her to further speak out with the "Save Willie McGee" famous rally in 1948
protesting the beating of the furniture shop  owner in Trenton, New Jersey. As Mrs. Baker
became more and more outspoken  about the injustice against  Black in the United States of
America, some Blacks began to see Mrs. Baker as toublesome or to controversial and began
to avoid her,for fear she may hurt or derail their cause. Josephine Baker lived to see the
pillars of segregation in the United States of American crumble and calaspe under the      
weight of the work of stamping out injustice, in all of its forms,like her and so many
other Black leaders were doing.
Josephine Baker died April 12th,1975 at her home in Paris, France.

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