Out dancer Josephine Baker becomes first Black woman interred at the Pantheon in Paris

Josephine Baker in her iconic banana skirt
Photo: Walery via Wikipedia

Out American-born dancer Josephine Baker will be the first Black woman – and the sixth woman ever – to be interred at the Pantheon in Paris, one of the highest postmortem honors in France.

Baker, who was born in poverty in Missouri, dazzled France as a dancer when she first arrived in Europe in the 1920s, worked for the resistance as a spy during the Second World War, and built her “Rainbow Tribe” – her, her fourth husband Jo Bouillon, and their 12 adopted children of different ethnicities – in a chateau after the war while campaigning for civil rights.

Related: How a bi black dancer from St. Louis helped the Resistance liberate France from Nazis

Currently, 80 people who have made significant contributions to French history had their remains transferred to the mausoleum at the Pantheon, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Marie Curie, and Louis Braille.

Seventy-five of the people buried there are men and almost all are white.

Now Baker, who was an out bisexual woman born in 1906, will get a…

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