Mexico's Ledia Juarez competes in the gymnastics rhythmic individual hoop final at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, Friday, November 3, 2023. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

Canada's Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps compete in the pairs short program during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final in Beijing on December 7, 2023. (Photo by Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

An artist performs a fire kettle show during the Mid-Autumn Festival at a night market in Beijing, Tuesday, September 17, 2024. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)

“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)

Smoke rises from a replica of a T-Rex after it burst into flames at the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience in Canon City, Colorado, U.S. in this picture obtained from social media March 22, 2018. (Photo by Reuters/Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience)

Actors Timothee Chalamet, Monica Barbaro and Elle Fanning attend a premiere of the film “A Complete Unknown” at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California on December 11, 2024. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Moroccan horsemen fire their rifles during a performance to celebrate the annual Moussem festival in El Jadida on August 6, 2023. (Photo by Fadel Senna/AFP Photo)

Reveller Jacqueline Fernandez looks on in the rain during the 26th Annual Kensington Market Winter Solstice Parade in Toronto, Canada, December 21, 2015. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Reuters)