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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

9. She Was Tight With Grace Kelly

Hollywood star Grace Kelly was one of Josephine Baker’s best buddies. The friendship reportedly began in 1951, when racist waiters at the Stork Club, a then famous New York City nightclub and restaurant, refused to serve the black singer. Kelly berated the waiters and managers, then angrily stalked out of the prestigious club in a show of solidarity with Baker, vowing to never patronize the establishment again. Years later, Kelly, by then Princess of Monaco, returned, in company with her husband, the Prince of Monaco.

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.