“All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.” --
Josephine Baker, my Great Great Aunt , was born on June 3, 1906.

OkokokOK, I made the part up about her being my aunt – her real name wasn’t even Baker – but I’ve adored her since the minute I first read about this brave, funny, talented, glamorous, generous woman.

Freda Josephine McDonald was born into poverty in St. Louis, Missouri, deserted by her father and was homeless, living on the streets as a teen. She danced for money and ended up in vaudeville and then on Broadway. But it was a trip to Paris that changed her life and made her one of the first true international superstars – a singer, dancer, and film actress. Her career skyrocketed in the integrated Paris society of the l920s. She starred in La Folie du Jour at the Follies-Bergère Theater, was soon one of the most photographed women in the world and, by 1927, she was the highest paid entertainer in Europe.

There’s much more to her life, of course-- her adoption of 12 children, her heartbreaking treatment when she came to the U.S. in the l930s, experiencing prejudice and ridicule. But she never stopped speaking out against racism and eventually returned to the U.S. frequently to support the civil rights movement. In fact, she spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, telling the crowd they looked like "salt and pepper… Just what it should be."

But her amazing work in World War II is as incredible as any thriller movie plot. She was brave, brilliant, and brazenly committed to fighting the Nazis.

Not only did Josephine Baker work as a Red Cross nurse and entertain the troops but, in the fall of 1939, when France declared war on Germany, she was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau,the French military intelligence, as a spy.

Josephine was her gorgeous, charming self at embassies and ministries, chatting up people and collecting information about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. Her café-society connections helped her gain access to high-ranking Japanese officials and Italian bureaucrats and she flirted, cajoled and collected important intelligence for the French resistance.

When the Germans invaded France, she moved to the south of France and used her home to protect members of de Gaulle’s Free French efforts and to supply them with visas. Because she was an entertainer, she was able to travel around Europe without rousing suspicion on her spy missions as she carried information for transmission to England about German troop concentrations in France. She transported secret intelligence by writing it in invisible ink on her music. And when she took her entourage as cover into North Africa and Spain, she carried the information she gathered for the resistance pinned to her underwear. What a brave soul! What a woman!!

When she died in l975, more than 20,000 people lined the Paris streets to watch her funeral procession and the French government honored her with a 21-gun salute.