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40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

Khalid Elhassan July 2, 2019 24 min

Josephine Baker - Josephine Baker - Chanter L'amour

22. Her List of Female Lovers Was Long

Josephine Baker had a who’s who list of female lovers who were famous in their day. They included blues singer Clara Smith, jazz singer Ada Smith, actresses Mildred Smallwood and Evelyn Sheppard, and politician Bessie Allison. Most famous of her lovers, perhaps, was Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. She met Baker during a trip to Paris in 1939, and the two hit it off. Awkwardly, Frieda Kahlo was travelling with her husband on a European trip, when she had her affair with Baker.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.