The Many Faces of Josephine Baker

by Peggy Caravantes

  The next day, the papers carried the story of Joséphine’s complaint against the Stork Club. The Milwaukee Journal quoted her as saying: “This is a terrible experience…. It is a snub to my color, to my people. It’s not just something you can let drop. It is un-American. It is not fair to other Americans. I am consulting with my lawyers and I’m going to do something about it—not for Josephine Baker. I’m doing it for America.”

  At 7:00 PM, NAACP members picketed the club. For some reason Joséphine’s wrath focused not on the club but on Walter Winchell, whom she claimed should have come to her aid because he was a good friend of the manager, Sherman Billingsley. Winchell claimed he was unaware of a problem and had left the club before Joséphine stormed out. On his next Sunday night broadcast, he said: “I am appalled at the agony and embarrassment caused Joséphine Baker in the Stork Club. But I am especially appalled at the efforts to involve me in an incident in which I had no part.” Winchell, who was Jewish, resented being accused of discrimination, particularly since he had always prided himself on his lack of racial prejudices.

  Joséphine picked the wrong person to focus on in her all-out battle against segregation. Thanks to his popular radio broadcasts, Winchell had the eyes and ears of Americans. He accused Joséphine of all sorts of treasonous activities. It was 1951, and a fear of Communism pervaded the nation. Winchell accused her of being a Communist. He found a 16-year-old article in which she had praised Italy’s prime minister Benito Mussolini before his involvement in World War II. Winchell called Joséphine a Fascist. He even belittled her service for France during the war. He called her Josey-Phoney Baker.

  Joséphine suffered the fallout of Winchell’s baseless accusations. She had become a controversial figure, and one by one, theaters cancelled her scheduled appearances. With the cancellations, she lost the opportunity to become an American idol and to earn enough money to finish financing the work on Les Milandes. Sadly, Joséphine didn’t understand much of the political rhetoric thrown at her since she lacked a formal education. Her activism was truly born of her simple desire to prove that all people could—and should—live together in harmony.

  No one won the battle. The episode finally ended with the mayor’s committee issuing its report that they had found nothing to support a charge of racial discrimination in regard to the Stork Club incident. Walter Winchell never regained his powerful position because the public and the media felt his accusations were unprofessional. Joséphine lost her opportunity to tour the United States and left for South America, where she would get in even deeper trouble.

  9

  In My Village

  INSTEAD OF GOING DIRECTLY TO South America, Joséphine detoured through Cuba, ruled at that time by dictator Fulgencio Batista. Because he was half-black, Joséphine believed she could get him to support her world brotherhood crusade. However, she wasn’t aware of Cuba’s long history of racial discrimination against its black citizens. Upon her arrival in Havana, she quickly learned she had not escaped racial prejudice—two of the city’s largest hotels refused her a room. When she arrived at the radio station where she was supposed to sing, police barred her entry. She at last found a small movie theater that, although it received threats, allowed her to sing. Each night she filled the auditorium.

  One evening while she performed at the theater, Havana police searched her hotel rooms. After the show, the police arrested her on charges of supporting Communists, though the basis for that claim was not clear. After fingerprinting Joséphine and assigning her a criminal number, 0000492, the police demanded she sign a statement saying that she was working for Moscow. Joséphine, of course, refused. After intensive questioning, her captors took her photograph and led her to a hall where numerous pictures of “wanted people” were displayed. The police placed her picture on the wall and slapped a sign that said COMMUNIST under the photograph. They later claimed her arrest was a mistake and released her. Joséphine’s only comment was to say that “everyone who believes in brotherhood has been accused of Communism.”

  Grabbing attention in Havana with another new hairstyle with the help of hairdresser Jean Clement. © Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis

  In September 1952 Joséphine headed south to perform in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She originally planned to stay there for six weeks, but she became so enmeshed in the country’s politics that she stayed for six months. Argentina was in mourning—two months earlier, its heroine, Eva “Evita” Perón, had died at an early age.

  The poor people adored the woman who rose from the same kind of poverty that many of them endured. They saw her taking money from the rich to give it to them. What they didn’t see was her stealing from the poor to make herself rich. They knew nothing about or simply ignored her $40,000 annual expenditures on Paris fashions and the Swiss bank accounts holding $20,000,000. After her early death from cervical cancer, she was further revered by Argentinians, many of whom went so far as to call her a saint.

  Joséphine identified with Eva and was fascinated by her life story. Both women came from poverty-stricken childhoods and had little formal schooling. They both became singers. They both seemingly wanted to help the poor and downtrodden. At her first performance in Buenos Aires, Joséphine was delighted to learn that Eva’s widowed husband, dictator Juan Domingo Perón, was in the audience. After the show, he sent one of his aides backstage to arrange a meeting with her. Joséphine accepted the invitation, unaware of the damage Perón had done to his country. Under his leadership, Argentina had become a fascist state and a refuge for Nazi war criminals, but he had become popular with the masses through financial handouts. Since his wife’s death, he had no idea about how to proceed because he had depended on her strong personality to guide his decision making.

  EVA PERÓN

  Eva Perón, born Maria Eva Ibarguren, suffered from discrimination throughout her childhood because her parents were not married. She longed to be an actress, and after completing two years of high school, Eva went to Buenos Aires to pursue an acting career. When she discovered she had little acting ability but possessed an appealing voice, she began a successful career on radio. At a fundraising event for earthquake victims in 1944, she met Colonel Juan Perón, a fast-rising politician who was also a widower. The two were instantly attracted to each other, and within a few weeks she moved into his apartment The two married one year later, in 1945, just after Juan was elected president of Argentina.

  Eva, or Evita as she preferred to be called, was popular with the working-class people of Argentina. She felt close to them because of her own childhood struggles with poverty. Soon, Argentinians were clamoring for her to run for vice president. However, both she and her husband had numerous military and political opponents. Before she reached a decision, Evita was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer, and she died at the age of 33. Almost a million Argentinians filled the streets to see her funeral procession. The 1979 musical Evita brought back to public awareness the life of this woman.

  The morning after he saw Joséphine perform, Perón sent a car to bring her to la Casa Rosada, the pink government mansion where he had his offices. When she met him, she noted the black band on the left upper arm of his suit coat worn to indicate that he was in mourning for his wife. She expressed her sympathy, and as they talked, he said that his wife had admired Joséphine and followed her career. After visiting with Joséphine a while, he realized that she had a strong character like his late wife, Eva. He invited her to speak to workers at a memorial rally for his wife. Joséphine agreed, but she did not think clearly about how her remarks would be interpreted in the United States, and she failed to recognize the significance of what she said. She spoke in flattering terms about Perón, a dictator whom the American government opposed. She praised him for what he had done for Argentina and at the same time criticized the United States for its ongoing racism. The Perón-backed newspapers loved everything she said and spread her speeches across the country.

  An American newspaper picked up one of the Argentinian
articles and distributed it in the United States, where even African Americans started to distance themselves from her, fearing that her remarks would hurt the civil rights movement. Her speeches in Argentina angered more Americans than had all of her previous civil rights work in the United States. The Justice Department publicly stated that if Joséphine Baker ever wanted to come back to the United States, “she would have to prove her right and worth.” Perón took advantage of Joséphine’s passion for social justice, and he encouraged her fiery speeches against the United States. Meanwhile, Joséphine used the platforms he provided to push her agenda of world brotherhood.

  Perón also invited Joséphine to take over some of the duties of running the Eva Perón Foundation, which had been established by his late wife to build schools, hostels, and hospitals. In her new role for the foundation, she was scheduled to visit several hospitals, which Perón claimed were models for caring for the sick. But he didn’t tell Joséphine that there were two sets of hospitals—those he showcased and the rest, the majority, which were in desperate need of personnel and supplies. He planned for her to see the well-run facilities, but Joséphine arranged her own tour based upon the buildings’ locations.

  Her independently arranged visit thus took her to see the deprived hospitals rather than the hospitals intended for public viewing. Most of the old and run-down buildings needed major repairs. They were understaffed and poorly equipped. Many did not have sufficient medications or even enough food for the patients. One of the institutions was a hospital for the mentally ill, where the people were treated like animals. An aide who accompanied Joséphine on her tour said, “They were rolling around the lawn in rags, eating their own filth.”

  Such conditions shocked Joséphine, who began to realize that the Perón regime was not what it appeared to be. She started listening to the people she met—hearing their tales of fear and of government oppression. She decided to go home. She was tired of both Americas—North and South—and longed to go back to France, to Jo, and to Les Milandes, where she planned to create her own world of unified brotherhood.

  Upon her arrival at Les Milandes, Joséphine’s first act was to try to turn it into a little kingdom with her as its reigning monarch. She had flags designed and she opened a fake post office with stamps printed to make Les Milandes seem like a country. The stamps could not be used for mail, of course, but the postmistress distributed them as gifts to tourists. Above the door to the château’s theater was a neon-outlined silhouette of Joséphine. Her initials marked the wrought-iron gates to the property, and the swimming pool was in the shape of a J. The most flamboyant room in the hotel, La Chartreuse des Milandes, was called the Joséphine Room. Finally, there was Jorama, the wax museum that depicted scenes from her life, including one of a small girl dancing for her brothers and sisters in St. Louis and one of Joséphine’s audience with the pope.

  Although sometimes extravagantly generous to other people, Joséphine made sure that all of her family (except her mother, Carrie) contributed to the château’s operation. Sister Margaret helped on the farm, and her husband, Elmo, maintained and rented paddleboats on a part of the Dordogne River that ran through the property. In 1952, Joséphine’s brother Richard joined the rest of the family in France. Upon his arrival, Joséphine took him on a tour of Les Milandes. As they walked, she reminded him of how far they had come from the poverty of their St. Louis childhood: “Look what God has given us. To think of where we’ve come from and where we are today. I often think of the time when we were little kids and didn’t have anything. I have often wished that we had this in America.” Richard first served as his sister’s chauffeur, but she soon built him a gas station with two pumps and a small garage. Located on the main road to Les Milandes, it soon became a profitable business.

  Carrie was the only person who did not work and she never learned to speak French. Instead, she spent her days wearing a white linen dress and sitting in a rocking chair underneath a huge elm. Visitors who passed by her often took her picture, and she talked with those who spoke English. Although she accepted the generosity of her first child, she never understood why the public adored Joséphine.

  It was time for Jo and Joséphine to start their demonstration of world brotherhood. Joséphine could have retired as a wealthy entertainer, but instead she focused on bringing children to Les Milandes. As she had told her old friend Miki Sawada, she wanted “to adopt five little two-year-old boys, a Japanese, a black from South Africa, an Indian from Peru, a Nordic child, and an Israelite [who] will live together like brothers.” Since the children would not be blood-related, having only one gender would prevent problems when they became teenagers. Joséphine called the children her Rainbow Tribe. They would prove that all races and nationalities could live together in harmony. In the spring of 1954, Joséphine traveled to Japan for a speaking tour. She planned to adopt her first child while in that country.

  Before leaving Les Milandes, she contacted Miki Sawada, who had become the director of the Elizabeth Saunders Home, an orphanage in a Tokyo suburb.

  Upon her arrival at the Elizabeth Saunders Home, Joséphine walked through the building. All of the children looked alike to her, with their straight black hair and slanted eyes. She frequently stopped to play with one child or another. One little boy refused to leave her side. He was only 18 months old, but he did all he could to get her attention—hugging her and whispering words she could not understand. Miki told her they had named him Akio, or Autumn, because that was the time of the year when they found him. She said that he was Korean, he had been abandoned by his mother, and he was probably the child of an American soldier.

  MIKI SAWADA

  After World War II, many mixed-race children—born to Japanese women and American soldiers who were stationed in Japan during the occupation—were abandoned on the streets of Japan. Though Miki Sawada grew up in a wealthy Japanese family largely untouched by poverty, these abandoned children touched her heart. Since she was married to a diplomat, she had traveled widely, and had been impressed by the orphanages she visited while in London. Then, while living in America, Miki became very ill. During her stay in the hospital, a nurse told her the story of the Good Samaritan, and it had a tremendous impact on Miki. Miki became a Christian and decided she wanted to build an orphanage for children in Japan like the ones she had seen in England.

  At first, Miki cared for children in her own home. Then the government took over all personal property, and the once-wealthy benefactor no longer had a place to raise them. Miki sold everything she had left and then sought donations. The first person to respond to her plea was a British nanny named Elizabeth Saunders, after whom Miki later named the orphanage when it was erected in 1948. Miki raised more than 2,000 orphans, and she treated them as if they were her own children. She died in 1980.

  Joséphine decided he would be her first adopted child. As she left the orphanage with Akio, she walked down a long sidewalk. She saw a solemn baby sitting under a tree with a caretaker. The infant and Joséphine made eye contact that neither seemed capable of breaking. The caretaker explained that he loved being outside and cried when taken indoors. His name was Teruya; he was Shinto; and he had been born on July 15, 1953. Joséphine could not resist his sweet face, so she adopted him too.

  She didn’t inform Jo of the extra adoption until she stepped off the train in Paris with two bundles in her arms. He accepted the change in their plans, and they renamed Teruya “Janot” because it was easier for them to pronounce.

  This trip established a pattern that Joséphine followed for years. As she made her way around the world, revisiting places where she had performed, she gathered more of her Rainbow Tribe. Next, she adopted Jari, a Scandinavian child with blue eyes and fair skin, from an orphanage in Helsinki. Adoptions in Finland were relatively easy because families could give a child to the government if they proved they could not afford to care for it. The government provided for such children for two months before sending them to foster care. The day th
at Joséphine visited the Helsinki orphanage, two-year-old Jari was scheduled to be moved into foster care. She paid the adoption fee to the Finnish government and left the orphanage with the chubby little boy in her arms.

  The next tour took Joséphine to Bogotá, Colombia, in South America. There, the mother of eight black children approached her. The desperate woman said she could not afford to support so many children, and she asked Joséphine to adopt her youngest child, named Gustavio Valencia. Joséphine bought the family a small house and a garden in exchange for the child, and she promised to keep in touch with the mother and to bring the boy back for a visit with his family. Joséphine did not keep her promise. Instead, she changed Gustavio’s name to Luis, and she never told him about his previous life.

  Joséphine Baker and Jean-Claude, whom she and Jo adopted after she found the child starving in Paris. © Bettmann/CORBIS

  Joséphine had four children from three races and four religions, but she still didn’t have a child from Peru. Instead she continued adopting other children. On her next trip into Paris, she found Jean-Claude in a French orphanage. This time, in addition to not seeking Jo’s input, she used a nurse and a friend to carry the child to Les Milandes. Joséphine was not even there when the surprise for Jo arrived. When she came home, all she told her husband about the latest adoptee was that she couldn’t leave behind a child who was starving. Jo reminded her to be conservative with her spending, especially because of the blow to their finances when her American tour that was supposed to bring in $200,000 had been cancelled. As usual, Joséphine paid little attention to Jo’s warnings. She was determined to fill her life with the children she could not have naturally due to her earlier botched surgeries. “I suffered a lot because I couldn’t have children of my own,” she told a French reporter. “I felt inferior because of that.”