Josephine Baker To Be First Black Woman In France's Pantheon

Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Aug, 2021 ) :Josephine Baker, the famed French-American dancer, singer and actress who fought in the French resistance during WWII and later battled racism, will later this year become the first Black woman to enter France's Pantheon mausoleum.

Baker will be just the sixth woman to join the around 80 great national figures of French history in the Pantheon after Simone Veil, a former French minister who survived the Holocaust and fought for abortion rights, entered in 2018.

Although American-born Baker's body will remain in Monaco where she is buried, she will be honoured on November 30 with a memorial with a plaque, one of her children, Claude Bouillon-Baker, told AFP.

"Pantheonisation is built over a long period of time," an aide to President Emmanuel Macron told AFP on Sunday, confirming a report in the Le Parisien newspaper.

Jennifer Guesdon, part of a group campaigning for Baker's induction that includes one of the dancer's sons, said they met with Macron on July 21.

"When the president said yes, (it was a) great joy," she said.

"It's a yes!" Macron said after the July meeting, Le Parisien reported.

The Baker family have been requesting her induction since 2013, with a petition gathering about 38,000 signatures.

"She was an artist, the first Black international star, a muse of the cubists, a resistance fighter during WWII in the French army, active alongside Martin Luther King in the civil rights fight," the petition says.

Guesdon said the campaign has "made people discover the undertakings of Josephine Baker, who was only known to some as an international star, a great artist," Guesdon said.

But "she belongs in the Pantheon because she was a resistance fighter," she added.