Josephine Baker's Tomb

This room holds two of the most recently transferred 20th-century figures: Maurice Genevoix, a World War I veteran, and Josephine Baker, the American-born singer and dancer. Baker is the first Black woman and the first entertainer to be laid to rest in the Panthéon. An American entertainer, no less. It might seem an odd title for someone honored in a monument to French historical heroes, so why was she interred here?

Baker was born into a very poor family in the United States and began working as a child. Spotted while performing in a street troupe, she was cast in Broadway's first all-Black musical. A Parisian industry figure saw her talent and brought her to France. Jazz was all the rage in France at the time too, and the talented, charismatic Baker, with her gift for singing and dancing, became a sensation in French high society. Every music hall in Paris scrambled to book her, and even Hemingway and Pablo Picasso lavished her with praise.

Baker had three more roles besides entertainer. First, during World War II she was a spy for the French Resistance fighting the Nazis. Using her status as an entertainer who toured abroad, she carried classified information from French intelligence, hidden in sheet music, to French officials overseas. Being a performer also made it easy to pick up information from high-society figures in other countries. Second, she volunteered for the Resistance air force and served at a base in North Africa. Third, she was a civil rights activist who fought American racism. As a global superstar from her tours abroad, she was angered by America's unchanged racism. There were hotels for whites only, and restaurants turned away Black customers. She spoke out against segregation at her American shows, and when the FBI found out, she was barred from entering the US, so although she was American, she couldn't enter the country for ten years. When she was finally allowed back in, she gave a speech against racism alongside the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Baker kept performing around the world until shortly before her death at 68, from a stroke. She is the last figure we meet in the Panthéon, and the most modern one.