Josephine Baker was a transcendent force of nature who transformed her early life in St. Louis into global stardom as a singer, dancer, and actress in France. Born on June 3, 1906, she faced severe racial discrimination in her homeland and found creative freedom in Paris, becoming an iconic symbol of the Jazz Age. When global conflict erupted, Baker leveraged her immense fame to serve as an invaluable agent for the French Resistance, smuggling secret military intelligence written in invisible ink on her sheet music and entertaining Allied troops across North Africa.
In the decades following the war, Baker adopted 12 children from entirely different corners of the globe, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds, creating what she proudly called her Rainbow Tribe. She raised them in a grand French chateau, inviting the international press to witness their harmonious life together to prove to a divided world that brotherhood and love could transcend the deeply entrenched racial barriers of the 20th century.
