Josephine Baker: How The First Global Pop Star Broke The Rules

Forbes

6 hours ago

One hundred years ago, Josephine Baker left America and changed the world. Before Beyoncé filled stadiums, before Rihanna built a billion-dollar brand, and before Tina Turner took control of her story, there was Josephine Baker. In the fall of 1925, she got on a ship and never looked back. She wasn't just a performer. She was the first Black woman to become a global pop star. She built an empire with her face, her body, her voice, and her refusal to play by America's rules.
Singer and dancer Josephine Baker (1906 - 1975), sitting on a tiger rug, circa 1925. (Photo by ... More)
This story is part of my Substack, Vanilla is Black, where I explore how Black genius shaped global culture.
Think about what it means to be a global superstar today. You need multiple revenue streams: music, film, fashion, endorsements, and a carefully curated image. Josephine Baker mastered that nearly a century ago.
And here's the thing about Baker that resonates today, she did it all in opposition to life in America.
There is a defiance in Josephine Baker that stands apart from, say, Louis Armstrong, whom I love. Unlike Armstrong, whose brilliance often worked within American constraints, Baker refused to play by their rules. Josephine Baker captivates because, at all times, she appears to be in control. Nothing about her was an accident. Baker was operating on an entirely different level of strategy. Baker's career was built on more than talent. It was strategy, timing, and selling to the public what they wanted before they realized they wanted it. She used her sexuality as a tool for progression, not oppression.
'I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.'
Escape to Fame
Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906. She grew up poor in St. Louis. By 13, Baker was married and making a living as a waitress and street performer. The seminal moment of her early life was witnessing the East St. Louis Race Riot of 1917. White mobs murdered dozens of Black folks. Rioters burned down Black homes and businesses.
American entertainer Josephine Baker (1906 - 1975), in costume for her famous 'banana dance', circa ... More 1925. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo)
This first-hand experience of racial violence and survival shaped Baker's worldview. The trauma of witnessing such destruction informed her later activism, her insistence on performing for integrated audiences, and her rejection of American racial constraints.
Josephine Baker left St. Louis as a performer after a second brief marriage (at 15), with the name she would make famous. She arrived in Harlem at the peak of the Renaissance and landed a spot in Shuffle Along, one of the first all-Black Broadway hits. She was hired to work backstage but eventually moved herself in front of the audience. The embodiment of 'make a way out of no way' Baker's comic timing and dancing stole the show. She stole another show as a part of Chocolate Dandies (saints preserve us). But despite her rising stardom, Broadway wasn't ready for a Black woman to be anything more than a chorus girl.
Then Paris called.
Baker left America at a time of great change. Baker's performance at the Folies Bergère changed everything. She danced in a skirt made of 16 (rubber) bananas. That image of Baker became THE image of the Jazz Age. She turned herself into a brand before that was a thing. Her multilingual recordings were wildly popular. She starred in movies and toured Europe.
Beyond music, Baker helped shape global Black beauty standards. Her bold use of exoticism played into Western fantasies, but she used it to control her own image. She set beauty and fashion trends, from her iconic slicked-back hair to the dramatic costumes that influenced couture designers.
It looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose if one was held back by one's color? No, I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises.
The key to Baker's decades-long success wasn't simply her talent or looks. The constant in her career was adaptability and reinvention. Madonna did it. Lady Gaga did it. Beyoncé does it with every album cycle. Josephine Baker did it first.
Continued Resistance
Baker's most daring transformation came during World War II. When the Nazis invaded her beloved Paris, what did she do? Baker became a spy for the French Resistance. She used her fame as her cover. She gathered intelligence at parties and performances, using being underestimated as her greatest weapon. One of Baker's boldest espionage moves was smuggling military secrets on sheet music using invisible ink. At one diplomatic event, she charmed Nazi officials while covertly delivering intelligence to the Allies. When the war ended, Baker was awarded two of France's biggest honors, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor.
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), 20th century, France, New York, Schomburg Center. (Photo by ... More Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)
By the 1950s, Baker was an institution in France. But in America? Not so much.
She had never forgotten the racism she faced in St. Louis and New York. When she returned to the U.S. she refused to perform for segregated audiences. If you wanted Josephine, you had to integrate your club or venue to book her. The FBI, under J Edgar Hoover, labeled Baker a Communist sympathizer, and her visa to the U.S. was revoked. The woman who exported jazz and American culture was blacklisted in her home.
Despite this, she continued to fight. She publicly condemned American racism consistently abroad. She leveraged her international celebrity to call out injustice. Her battle with the U.S. government exposed the hypocrisy of a nation that celebrated her talent but rejected her humanity.
'I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee.'
—JoseBaker was long a supporter of civil rights in America (and Europe). Her icon status by 1963, made her invitation to speak at the March on Washington, inevitable. She was the only woman to take the stage alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Read that again. Wearing her Free French military uniform and war medals, she stood in front of 250,000 people and called out the hypocrisy of America:
American-born French singer, dancer, and actress Josephine Baker (1906 - 1975) speaks from a podium ... More on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington DC, August 28, 1963. (Photo by Roosevelt H. Carter/Getty Images)
Long before celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Madonna made international adoption a trend, Baker adopted twelve children from different racial backgrounds, calling them the Rainbow Tribe. She wanted to create a real-life model of racial harmony. The Rainbow Tribe was ambitious, idealistic, loving, a bit half-baked, and far ahead of its time.
If you follow the money, Baker's impact is obvious. Every Black woman who has commanded the global stage—Dorothy Dandridge, Diahann Carroll, Tina Turner, Beyoncé—owes something to the path she carved. She was involved in every aspect of her career. She was the choreographer, stylist, makeup artist, wigmaker, and driver of her career. She was the first Black woman to headline films, break box office records, shape global fashion trends, and sell out international tours. She was a master of reinvention before reinvention was a survival tool in pop culture.
Singer Josephine Baker with her husband and adopted children, 1959. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch ... More Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
France recognizes Josephine Baker in ways America didn't and still hasn't. When she died in 1975, Baker became the first Black woman in French history to receive a state funeral. In 2021, she became the first Black woman inducted into France's Panthéon, one of the nation's highest honors. No part of modern pop stardom is free from her fingerprints. Beyoncé has honored her in performances. Rihanna's business empire follows the same blueprint Baker pioneered, using stardom to control an entire industry. Even Lady Gaga's reinvention tactics mirror Baker's adaptability. She wasn't just the first Black pop star. She was the prototype for the modern celebrity itself.
As my dad used to say, the first person who discovered the wheel was a genius. The second person was just a copycat. Josephine Baker created a pathway to stardom for everyone. Baker didn't just exist in history. She built it. By making a way out of no way, every Black woman who came after her could walk through doors that, once upon a time, didn't even exist. If we look hard at her life and our times, I think we'll realize she's still leading us. I mean, her autobiography is titled: Fearless and Free.UNSPECIFIED - CIRCA 1970: Photo of Josephine Baker Photo by MichaelA NOTE
I want to thank Arpine Eloyan and her team at the West Hollywood Public Library for being so unbelievably patient with me over the last few months.
🔗 Subscribe to Vanilla is Black for more stories that connect race, culture, and power—past and present.
Endnotes
McLaughlin, Malcolm. 'Reconsidering the East St. Louis Race Riot of 1917.' International Review of Social History, 47, no. 2 (2002): 187–212. JSTOR
Biography.com, 'Josephine Baker'
Silent London, 'Siren of the Tropics (1927)'Washington Post, 'March on Washington Had One Female Speaker: Josephine Baker'Britannica, 'Josephine Baker'