“Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Nicknamed the “Bronze Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, and even the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture and to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre”.

Photo: American entertainer Josephine Baker in costume for her famous “banana dance”. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo by Walery/Getty Images)

A protester uses molotov cocktails against riot police during May Day protests on May 1, 2010 in Athens, Greece. (Photo by Milos Bicanski /Getty Images)

Bangladeshi Muslim devotees arrive in an over-crowded train to attend the final day of an Islamic congregations' first phase in Tongi, 20 kilometers (13 miles) north of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, January 10, 2016. The second phase of the annual event, one of the world's largest congregations of Muslims is scheduled to begin Friday. (Photo by A.M. Ahad/AP Photo)

A TV journalist reports next to a life-size cutout of Pope Francis outside the Catholic Nunciature before the pontiff arrives in Mexico City, Friday, February 12, 2016. Pope Francis is arriving in Mexico on Friday for a week-long visit. (Photo by Christian Palma/AP Photo)

People sit near a fully loaded in Madama near the border with Lybia on January 1, 2015. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian paid a surprise visit to northern Niger on January 1, to visit a base being built to combat the growing flow of weapons and jihadists from neighbouring Libya. Le Drian travelled from Chad to Madama, a desert outpost about 100 kilometres from Libya, where he saw in the New Year with troops at a French base. Madama is situated on the route used by jihadists and arms smugglers in southern Libya to reach northern Mali and Niger. (Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP Photo)

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Participants climb over a wall at the “Tough Mudder” endurance event series in Arnsberg September 6, 2014. Competitors who took part in the endurance event saw themselves having to overcome various military style obstacles. (Photo by Ina Fassbender/Reuters)

Ryan Randall plays the bagpipes outside a polling station in Edinburgh, Scotland September 18, 2014. Polling in the referendum on Scottish independence began on Thursday morning, as Scotland votes whether or not to end the 307-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom. (Photo by Paul Hackett/Reuters)