Models present creations during the Central St Martins MA catwalk show at London Fashion Week in London, Britain, February 20, 2022. (Photo by Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

A woman pulls a wooden craft carrying her family in flood water after attending a wedding ceremony in Cilacap, Central Java, Indonesia, March 16, 2022. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A zookeeper counts penguins through an observation window during the annual stocktake at ZSL London Zoo in central London on January 3, 2023. (Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP Photo)

The drag troupe Dabber Dolls, arriving in Glasgow Central station on September 21, 2022 for their first tour of Mecca Bingo halls, are joined by a Scottish fan. (Photo by Robert Perry/The Guardian)

This photograph shows the famous Lyonnais fresco by CiteCreation with a tag depicting the Abbe Pierre with the word “rapist” next to it, in Lyon central-eastern France, on September 30, 2024. (Photo by Jeff Pachoud/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian carries children as wounded Palestinians receive treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, after an Israeli airstrike on a house, in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip on July 8, 2025. (Photo by Ramadan Abed/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)