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Josephine Baker's coffin at the Pantheon in Paris, carried by six French Air Force soldiers
Photo: Christophe Ena / AP
It is of course an unlikely coincidence that Josephine Baker, born in 1906 in Missouri / USA, died in Paris in 1975, was accepted into the Paris Pantheon on this Tuesday of all times. The initiative to include the singer, dancer and former resistance fighter in the graves of famous French personalities dates back to 2013 and was based on an idea by the writer Régis Debray. But there probably couldn't have been a better timing for the posthumous honor.
A few hours ago, the right-wing extremist publicist Éric Zemmour announced his candidacy for the presidential elections in April 2022 in a YouTube video. It was underlaid with images of violent attacks on the French, all of which allegedly came from foreigners, and were nourished by an infinite amount of hatred. The hatred was directed against Muslims, against immigrants, against everyone who is somehow different.
Now, however, in winter-dark Paris, Josephine Baker's coffin, covered with the French flag, is being carried up Rue Soufflot in the fifth arrondissement by six soldiers from the Air Force, slowly, at a precise 88 steps per minute - over a huge red carpet that leads to the Pantheon . Celebrities, family members, Prince Albert of Monaco, incumbent ministers, former prime ministers and presidents, the political staff of the republic are waiting there.
They want to honor the first black woman to enter the pantheon.
An immigrant who came to France from the USA at the age of 19 and is surprised that Parisians actually smile at her at Gare Saint-Lazare.
Which is suddenly no longer turned away in restaurants because of the color of her skin and which in the French capital, unlike in her home country, where she worked as a maid for a white family at the age of eight, can go wherever she wants.
She can now also use the whites' toilets, which is also new to her.
"Suddenly I was no longer afraid that someone would suddenly yell at me to tell me, 'You negress, go to the end of the line,'" she will tell later.
The honor is now given to a woman who refused to sing in Paris while the Germans occupied the city during World War II.
Baker joins the French Resistance, becomes a member of the Air Force, sings for soldiers at the front and hides both members of the Resistance and Jews in their property in the Dordogne in southern France.
She later smuggles secret information in her scores across borders and works as a spy.
An anti-racist is honored
On this Tuesday evening, the counter-program to Zemmour's horror video will be performed in the Pantheon.
A determined feminist is also honored.
An anti-racist who gave a passionate speech next to Martin Luther King during the March on Washington in August 1963.
Images of the dancing Josephine Baker are projected onto the historic facade.
And excerpts from Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.
»Antiracists de tous les pays.
Unissez-vous!
- Anti-racists of all countries, unite «is suddenly written on the neoclassical gable.
And the Parisians standing to the left and right of the red carpet applaud the coffin and the choir of the French army sings the song of the partisans.
Ten of their twelve children attend the solemn ceremony. She had adopted them, twelve children from eight countries, all of different skin colors and religions. Some were Buddhists, others Muslim, still others Catholics or Protestants. She called them her rainbow family. It was her generous, but also somewhat cerebral, project to overcome imposed limits - a field experiment in her own house that was supposed to prove that racism has no chance if you don't give it a place.
President Emmanuel Macron speaks towards the end of the ceremony.
“With you, Josephine Baker, a certain idea of freedom is entering the pantheon today, an idea of a festival.
You were born an American, but there was probably no one more French than you.
You said my country, that's Paris. "Everyone tonight would have that sentence on their lips today.
Then the President concludes his speech: "My France, this is Josephine."
Not everyone will agree with this phrase.
But there are many in the Pantheon.
