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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

10. The Rainbow Tribe

Josephine Baker and ten of her adopted children in 1964. Wikimedia

Josephine Baker, who had no biological children of her own, and whose wartime hysterectomy forever closed that possibility for her, eventually ended up adopting twelve children. They hailed from Algeria, Colombia, Finland, France, Israel, the Ivory Coast, Korea, Morocco, Japan, and Venezuela. Baker dubbed them “The Rainbow Tribe”, and lived with them in her French estate, Chateau des Milandes, which also doubled as a resort with hotels, a farm, rides, and The Rainbow Tribe singing for audiences. She saw her children as living metaphors of what humanity could be like, and an attack against racism.

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.