A man rides his bike along a controversial bike lane on Prospect Park West on August 17, 2011 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. In what is being viewed as a victory for the Bloomberg administration, a judge on Tuesday dismissed an effort by Brooklyn residents to remove a bicycle lane installed by the city on Prospect Park West. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has attempted to make New York more bicycle and pedestrian friendly with numerous bike and pedestrian lanes around New York City. The effort has angered some in the city who see the lanes as adding to traffic, taking up parking spaces and a danger to pedestrians. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Actors reenact the famous picture of a sailor kissing a nurse on the 70th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day, near a replica sculpture in New York's Times Square August 14, 2015. The replica is being displayed to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the iconic photograph of the most famous kiss in American history that was captured between an American sailor and nurse on August 14, 1945, marking the end of World War Two. The actors are hired by a tour bus company to pose for groups to photograph. (Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

A gaucho is unseat by a wild horse during the annual celebration of Criolla Week in Montevideo, March 30, 2015. Throughout Easter Week, “gauchos”, the Latin American equivalent of the North American cowboy, from all over Uruguay and neighboring Argentina and Brazil will visit Montevideo to participate in the Criolla Week to win the best rider award. The competition is held from March 29 to April 5 this year. (Photo by Andres Stapff/Reuters)

In this September 4, 1963, file photo, a police officer carries off a demonstrator holding a Confederate flag after a group of demonstrators protested enrollment of two African-Americans at Ramsay High School in Birmingham, Ala. The Confederate battle flag has been removed from South Carolina's Statehouse grounds, in the wake of the massacre of nine African-Americans, including a state senator, at an historic black church in Charleston in June 2015. (Photo by AP Photo)

American model Kaia Gerber (L) and American actress Kate Hudson attend the “Shell” After Party during the Toronto International Film Festival at Elevation Pictures on September 13, 2024. In this dark comedy and body horror about society's obsession with youth and good looks, an actress (Elisabeth Moss) challenges a beauty firm CEO (Kate Hudson) over her company's questionable science. (Photo by ZUMAPRESS.com/The Mega Agency)

“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)

The 18th Annual Buda County Fair and Weiner Dog Races was held at city park in Buda Sunday April 26, 2015 sponsored by the Lions Club. (Photo by Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman)

View of an American marine as he lies in a foxhole and whistles at a husky, one of the scouting dogs used during the landing on Guam, August 1944. (Photo by W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)