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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

35. She Was Married and Divorced Four Times

Self reliant since an early age, Josephine Baker, unlike most women of her era, was never dependent on a man for financial support. That translated into significant freedom, and one result of that independence was that Baker never hesitated to leave a relationship when things started going south. After divorcing Willie Wells, she married and divorced three more times. Willie Baker in 1921, whose name she kept. Frenchman Jean Lion in 1937, through which marriage she secured French citizenship. French orchestra leader Jo Boullion in 1947, who helped raise her twelve adopted children.

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.