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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

14. She Returned to the US, and Became a Civil Rights Activist

After the war, Josephine Baker reinvented herself as a mature entertainer, unafraid of serious subject matter or music. It worked, and she quickly reestablished herself as one of Paris’ biggest draws. In 1951, she was invited back to the United States, to perform in a Miami nightclub. There, Baker launched the latest iteration of her career, as a civil rights activist. Refusing to put up with racial segregation, she launched a public relations campaign that succeeded in desegregating the club’s audience.

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.