{"id":62436,"date":"2021-11-29T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62436"},"modified":"2021-11-29T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T22:14:10","slug":"dancer-singer-spy-frances-pantheon-to-honour-josephine-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62436","title":{"rendered":"Dancer, singer \u2026 spy: France\u2019s Panth\u00e9on to honour Josephine Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dancer, singer \u2026 spy: France\u2019s Panth\u00e9on to honour Josephine Baker<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2021-11-28<\/p>\n

Jon Henley<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\u2018Resistance heroine\u2019: Josephine Baker<\/a> entertains the troops at a London<\/a> victory party in 1945. Photograph: Jack Esten\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The performer will be the first Black woman to enter the mausoleum, in recognition of her wartime work<\/em><\/p>\n

In November 1940, two passengers boarded a train in Toulouse<\/a> headed for Madrid<\/a>, then onward to Lisbon<\/a>. One was a striking Black woman in expensive furs; the other purportedly her secretary, a blonde Frenchman with moustache and thick glasses.<\/p>\n

Josephine Baker<\/a>, toast of Paris<\/a>, the world\u2019s first Black female superstar, one of its most photographed women and Europe\u2019s highest-paid entertainer, was travelling, openly and in her habitual style, as herself \u2013 but she was playing a brand new role.<\/p>\n

Her supposed assistant was Jacques Abtey<\/a>, a French intelligence officer developing an underground counter-intelligence network to gather strategic information and funnel it to Charles de Gaulle\u2019s<\/a> London HQ, where the pair hoped to travel after Portugal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly, they were on their way to scout venues for Baker\u2019s planned tour of the Iberian peninsula<\/a>. In reality, they carried secret details of German troops in western France<\/a>, including photos of landing craft the Nazis<\/a> were lining up to invade Britain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The information was mostly written on the singer\u2019s musical scores in invisible ink, to be revealed with lemon juice. The photographs she had hidden in her underwear. The whole package was handed to British agents at the Lisbon<\/a> embassy \u2013 who informed Abtey and Baker they would be far more valuable assets in France than in London.<\/p>\n

So back to occupied France Baker duly went. \u201cShe was immensely brave, and utterly committed,\u201d Hanna Diamond<\/a>, a Cardiff university professor, said of Baker, who on Tuesday will become the first Black woman to enter the Panth\u00e9on<\/a> in Paris, the mausoleum<\/a> for France\u2019s \u201cgreat men\u201d….<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The performer will be the first Black woman to enter the mausoleum, in recognition of her wartime work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,28,459,8,25],"tags":[31765,96,31763,32554,32553,32552,12847,32555,27534,2103],"class_list":["post-62436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-europe","category-history","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-france","tag-freda-josephine-mcdonald","tag-hanna-diamond","tag-jacques-abtey","tag-jon-henley","tag-josephine-baker","tag-pantheon-in-paris","tag-paris","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62437,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62436\/revisions\/62437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}