21. American Racism Broke This Nazi Fighter’s Heart
Josephine Baker thrived in the integrated Paris of the 1920s. After La Revue Negre ran its course, she starred in La Folie du Jour, in which she continued to wow audiences with jaw-dropping performances. Before long, she rivaled Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson as the world’s most photographed woman. By 1927, within two years of her arrival in France, Baker was Europe’s highest-paid entertainer, male or female. In the early 1930s, she starred in a pair of movies and moved her family from St. Louis, to come and live with her in her French estate.
After more than a decade of success and adulation in France and Europe, Baker returned to America in 1936. She was swiftly reacquainted with the racism that had led to emigrate. Baker had changed, but America had not. She returned to France in 1937, brokenhearted. The experience contributed to her decision to abandon her US citizenship. Back in Paris, she married industrialist Jean Lion, and got naturalized as a French citizen. When France fell to the Nazi onslaught, Baker would risk her life for her new country.
