Visitors dressed in superhero costumes attend the Paris Comics Expo at the Parc Floral in Paris, France, April 15, 2016. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters)

Dancer of the Berlin State Ballet (Staatsballett Berlin) wear face masks as they perform during the dress rehearsal of Don Quixote in a production choreographed by Victor Ullate, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic at Deutsche Oper opera house in Berlin, Germany, December 1, 2021. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Students of the Krasnoyarsk choreographic college Anastasia Shevtsova (R) and Yulia Lyakhovykh do leg-splits as they study for an exam and a performance by the graduates at the State Theatre of Opera and Ballet, at the college's campus in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, May 4, 2017. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Sydney Peng, 19, who has been dancing for eleven years, performs a Chinese opera dance in celebration of the Lunar New Year, in the rotunda of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., on Sunday, January 22, 2023. (Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatariii/Star Tribune via AP Photo)

People stand in front of a black ribbon, symbolising remembrance and mourning, being projected onto the Sydney Opera House on February 9, 2023 in solidarity with Turkey and Syria after a massive earthquake devastated the two countries. (Photo by David Gray/AFP Photo)

A ballerina puts makeup on before practising for the revival of the classical ballet “Chopiniana”, the first since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in the underground area of the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre amid ongoing attacks, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on April 27, 2025. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

A spectator reacts after a Brazil Volleyball win during Paris 2024 Olympics in Women's Preliminary Round, Pool B Brazil vs Poland at South Paris Arena 1 in Paris, France on August 04, 2024. (Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)

“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)