Episode 23: Josephine Baker! How did she feel about the peel?

Josephine Baker is most known for being a glamorous showgirl who wore her famous banana skirt in 1920s and ’30s. But she was so much more! As a child she survived the Red Summer and the East St. Louis Massacre in 1917 and poverty to dazzle audience from NYC to Paris. During WWII, she was a spy, a volunteer nurse and a pilot for the Red Cross, reached the level of lieutenant and won the Croix de Guerre for her part in the French resistance. She worked tirelessly for civil rights and was the only female speaker at the March on Washington in 1963. Josephine was an entertainer, civil rights activist, war hero and mother who never lost her courage or sense of humor.

Freda Josephine McDonald was born on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. “Her mother, Carrie McDonald, was a washerwoman who had given up her dreams of becoming a music-hall dancer. Her father, Eddie Carson, was a vaudeville drummer. He abandoned Carrie and Josephine shortly after her birth. Carrie remarried soon thereafter and would have several more children in the coming years.

To help support her growing family, at age eight Josephine cleaned houses and babysat for wealthy white families, often being poorly treated. She briefly returned to school two years later before running away from home at age 13 and finding work as a waitress at a club. While working there, she married a man named Willie Wells, from whom she divorced only weeks later.

It was also around this time that Josephine first took up dancing, honing her skills both in clubs and in street performances, and by 1919 she was touring the United States with the Jones Family Band and the Dixie Steppers performing comedic skits. In 1921, Josephine married a man named Willie Baker, whose name she would keep for the rest of her life despite their divorce years later. In 1923, Baker landed a role in the musical Shuffle Along as a member of the chorus, and the comic touch that she brought to the part made her popular with audiences. Looking to parlay these early successes, Baker moved to New York City and was soon performing in Chocolate Dandies and, along with Ethel Waters, in the floor show of the Plantation Club, where again she quickly became a crowd favorite.” [more from Biography]

In the summer of 1925, Paris had a newfound obsession with jazz and anything exotic. People flocked to see Josephine Baker perform at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. As she descended from a palm tree wearing her now famous banana skirt, she became the biggest black female star in the world over night.

Josephine Baker was so popular in France, she sold her own beauty products including Bakerfix hair pomade for that slick down look and even Bakeroil skin-darkening lotion all over Europe. Yes, indeed. European women were darkening their skin to look like their idol.