Tales from The b.a.SKET: Black Art Sketches for the Contemporary Art Lover

By D. Amari Jackson

This week, we reach into the b.a.SKET and pull out a little-known spy and heroine of World War II…

January, 1941. Barely two months into the Nazi occupation of France, the Chicago Defender broke the news that one of the most popular entertainers in the world, Josephine Baker, had died in northern Africa after fleeing her Paris home and suffering an 18-month bout with peritonitis. Penned by the legendary Langston Hughes, the obituary read that Baker was “as much a victim of Hitler as the soldiers who fall today in Africa fighting his armies. The Aryans drove Josephine away from her beloved Paris.”

Hughes’ obituary was both tragic and stunning. The iconic Baker, who’d famously renounced her American citizenship years prior due to the racism she faced in the United States, was beloved by fans throughout the world.

Unbeknownst to Hughes, his obituary was also untrue. Though deathly ill and having endured multiple operations, the global icon, upon her subsequent recovery, told the Afro-American, “There has been a slight error, I’m much too busy to die.”

“Josephine Baker” by Gale Fulton Ross 30 x 40 inches, mixed media ink and acrylic on stretched canvas (2018) — unframed

Baker was telling the truth. Little known to the world at the time, one of the most recognized faces on the globe had travelled to northern Africa at the behest of the French government to spy on the Nazis and other potential opposition. Because of her international stardom, Baker was able to attend embassy parties and gather intelligence on Nazi alliances from starstruck diplomats in numerous countries like Morocco. The year before travelling to Africa, she had already risked her life and freedom by hiding Jewish refugees and French Resistance members in her chateau 300 miles southwest of her Paris home.

If that wasn’t dangerous enough, in November 1940—two  months before her prematurely-reported “death”—the seriously ill Baker collaborated with Jacques Abtey, chief of the French secret service, to smuggle documents to General Charles de Gaulle and the Free French government in exile in London. As detailed by Christopher Kleinmar of the History network, “Under the guise of embarking on a South American tour, the entertainer hid secret photographs under her dress and carried along sheet music with information about German troop movements in France written in invisible ink. With all eyes transfixed on the star as they crossed the border to Spain on their way to neutral Portugal, the French security chief, who posed as Baker’s secretary, garnered little notice from German officials.”

Upon the liberation of Paris in 1944, Baker finally returned to her beloved adopted country of France, the nation that celebrated her while her birth country of America continued to discriminate against her. Clad in her French lieutenant’s uniform, Baker rode in the back of an automobile along the Champs-Élysées to a hero’s welcome as a massive crowd of adoring onlookers tossed her flowers.

In 1961, Baker was awarded two of France’s highest military honors at a ceremony that revealed the extent of her life-risking espionage work during the war. Tears in eyes, Baker professed, “I am proud to be French because this is the only place in the world where I can realize my dream.”

With her mixed media ink and acrylic on stretched canvas piece depicting the incomparable Baker, Gale Fulton Ross reminds us of the dazzling beauty of the iconic entertainer, freedom fighter, activist, and war hero.

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Amari Jackson is a creator, author, TV/web/film producer, and award-winning journalist. He is author of the 2011 novel, The Savion Sequence; creator/writer/coproducer of the 2012-2014 web series The Book Look; writer/coproducer of the 2016 film Edge of the Pier; and current writer/coproducer of Listen Up! on HBCU GO/Roku TV. He is a former Chief of Staff for a NJ State Senator; a former VP of Communications & Development for the Jamestown Project at Harvard University; and a recipient of several writing fellowships including the George Washington Williams Fellowship from the Independent Press Association. An active ghost writer, song writer, martial artist, and journalist, his writings have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications.

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