PRESIDENT MACRON ENTERED JOSEPHINE BAKER AT PANTHEON AS 1ST BLACK WOMAN

USPA NEWS - President Macron, has yes, yielded to the online petition called « OSEZ JOSEPHINE » (« DARE JOSEPHINE » which has gathered 38, 000 signatures, and has also upon his own intellectual and spiritual conscience decided to bring in Josephine Baker, there in the Pantheon. She will thus be the sixth woman and the first and only black woman to reside in the Pantheon, one of the most prestigious tombs in the world. The 5 other women buried in the Pantheon are also great French figures who served the Fatherland and sacrificed themselves for a noble cause such as Sophie Berthelot (1907 accompanying her arm Marcelin Berthelot, great chemist), Marie Curie (1995, Nobel Prize for Physics et de Chimie), germaine Tillion ethnologist and resistant and Genevieve De Gaulle Anthonioz resistant (2015) and Simone Veil (2017), former survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camps, had the law which of abortion, adpoted in 1975 & 1st woman president of the European Parliament, in 1979. On this occasion, the President offered an outstanding celebration which he wanted to be joyful and solemn, and full of humanism in the image of the late heroine, Josephine Baker a very much loved by the French and Americans.

President Macron, has yes, yielded to the online petition called « OSEZ JOSEPHINE » (« DARE JOSEPHINE » which has gathered 38, 000 signatures, and has her own intellectual and spiritual conscience to bring in Josephine Baker, there in the Pantheon. She will thus be the sixth woman and the first and only black woman to reside in the Pantheon, one of the most prestigious tombs in the world. The five other women buried in the Pantheon are also great French figures who served the Fatherland and sacrificed themselves for a noble cause such as Sophie Berthelot (1907 accompanying her arm Marcelin Berthelot, great chemist), Marie Curie (1995, Nobel Prize for Physics et de Chimie), germaine Tillion ethnologist and resistant and Genevieve De Gaulle Anthonioz resistant (2015) and Simone Veil (2017), former survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camps, had the law which of abortion, which took its name in 1975 and adopted 1st woman president of the European Parliament, in 1979. PRESIDENT MACRON OFFERED JOSEPHINE BAKER AN OUTSTANDING CELEBRATION AND TRIBUTE AT THE PANTHEON---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On this occasion, the President offered an outstanding celebration which he wanted to be joyful and solemn, and full of humanism in the image of the late heroine, Josephine Baker a very much loved by the French and dear to the Americans, and in particular the Afro-Americans, on November 30, 2021. It is noted the presence of the Prince Albert of Monaco, who attended the ceremony obviously, as regard of the ties and boundaries between Josephine Baker and the Grimaldi family on Monaco, few years before she passed away. A long list of celebrities of the political and show bizz, French had been drawn up by the family of Josephine Baker and the French presidency. Brian Baker, one of the eleven children of the "Arc en ciel" tribe of Josephine Baker, currently a sports journalist, tells us that Brigitte Macron has worked a lot in the preparation of this ceremony, with a lot of dignity and respect for her memory. . (Josephine Baker adopted eleven children from eleven different countries to demonstrate that people of different origins from different social backgrounds could live together and love each other). One could, regret, however, the absence of American officials, even if for the moment, the ambassador of the United States in Paris, Denise Campbell Bauer nominated by Joe Biden this summer, has not yet been validated in his functions, by the American congresses. The ceremony began with the transport of Josephine Baker's coffin from rue Souflot to the Pantheon, carried by six soldiers of the Republican army and followed by another carrying the box bearing JosephineBaker's five medals. Songs, including the song of the partisans, which was the anthem of the French Resistance during WWII, was sung, while giant images were broadcast, on giant colored screens, on the facade of the Pantheon, as well as excerpts from archive films showing the actions and periods lived by Josephine Baker in France and in the USA. Outside the Pantheon, tribunes had been set up, received by prestigious guests and whole classes of schoolchildren with their teachers, as well as journalists and guests of ministries. Inside the Pantheon, was the head of state and his wife Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, alongside Brian and Jean Claude and Marianne living children of Josephine Baker, some members of the government, such as the minister of culture Roseline Bachelot, actors and Christian Louboutain, the legendary luxury shoemaker, the great rapper AbldalMalik, as well as Line Renaud, great iconic actress, French and defender of human rights and Francois Cluzet actor of the great film "Intouchables" by Olivier Nakkache and Eric Toledano.

THE PANTHEON IS THE HIGHEST & MOST PRESTIGIOUS TOMBAL CRYPT IN FRANCE HOSTING THE 76 GREAT WOMEN & MEN The Pantheon is one of the most beautiful and emblematic monuments of Paris, because not only is it a neo-classical style monument located in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, but on its pediment it honors the words: "Aux great men, the grateful homeland ”. Indeed, at the request of Napoleon who returned the building to worship, in 1806, whereas before Louis XV, a new church had been built between 1764 and 1790. Then, during the French Revolution, in 1791 , the Constituent Assembly transforms the church into a national necropolis. Thus in 1791, the Pantheon would receive the “Grands Hommes de France” and this is how Voltaire entered the Pantheon (just after Mirabeau, who was then excluded in 1793) and or have since joined him, 69 other great men. (Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Victor Schoelcher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, as well as many illustrious politicians, writers, scientists, and some religious and many soldiers).------------------------------------------------------- President Macron, “Combattante. Dancer. Singer. Black defending blacks, but first and foremost a woman defending mankind. American and French. Joséphine Baker led so many battles with freedom, lightness and gaiety. Dazzling with beauty and lucidity in a century of error, she made the right choices at every turn of history, always distinguishing the Lights from the darkness. And yet, nothing, nothing was written. Saint-Louis, 1906. Born to a laundress mother and an unknown father. Live in a cabin with a pierced roof. At only eight years old, serving a rich and white family to feed his own, poor and black. Being beaten, mistreated. To flee. Helplessly witnessing race riots and their cohort of deaths. Get married at 13. Do not be resigned. Dance, dance to live, live to dance. In Saint-Louis, New Orleans then in Philadelphia, captivate the public with its energy and humor. Win Broadway, the theater of possibilities, meet Caroline Dudley, creator of magazines in Europe. And raise all the curtains in front of you, yield all the doors, drop all the barriers. 2 Paris, 1925 »

JOSEPHINE BAKER TRANSFORMS RACISM INTO AN ASSET THROUGH HER HUMOR IN THE PARISIAN CABARETS, AND BECOMES THE « BLACK PEARL »-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- « When Josephine Baker arrives in France, Paris is a party. She is not yet 20. Roaring Twenties. Years of dance and music. Years of nights and drunkenness in which Joseph Kessel drowns, unaware that one day he will write the Chant des Partisans. If in this France divided between thirst for freedom and colonial prejudices, the child of Saint-Louis stands out, it is because she invented, from the famous evening of October 2, 1925 at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées , an issue that goes beyond the French contradictions of the time. Did the designers of the Nègre review imagine a belly dance for her, a fantasy of wild exoticism? knees, so that the comic soon turns away from the sensual. Is she asked to dance naked dressed in a simple belt of golden bananas? She agrees, but flattens the eroticism with grimaces, jerky gestures, sweeps away the clichés of a back of the hip and mocks the negro picture book with its mocking eye rolls, and stereotypes, Joséphine Baker endorses them. Yet, she jostles them, scratches them, turns them into sublime burlesque. Spirit of the Enlightenment ridiculing colonialist prejudices on notes by Sidney Bechet. The triumph is immediate. Folies Bergères, the legendary staircase of the Casino de Paris, stages from all the European capitals: the syncopated dances of the Black Pearl, insolent counterpoint to the basso continuo of racism, enchant France and soon all of Europe at an incredible speed. "Admits President Macron, in front of so much admiration that Josephine Baker may have aroused, who has transformed, through her sense of humor, the racism that was aimed at her, given her black skin color, and into an asset, and become the Black Pearl!

"THE FRENCH HAVE GIVEN ME EVERYTHING I AM READY TO GIVE THEM MY LIFE TODAY" SAID JOSEPHINE BAKER IN 1937 The head of State, Macron, makes an almost complete narration of the natural path and founds Josephine Baker, who actress, singer, dancer, decided to be resistant to the ratings of the French Resistance, in the face of Nazism, Hitler, by carrying code messages , in her scores, never spotted by the German enemy who would never have imagined that Josephine Baker was helping occupied France during the Second World War: “Here she is, one day, a singer on the successes of Vincent Scotto, another actress becoming Zouzou and giving the reply to Jean Gabin, then hurtling down the Champs-Elysées, cheetah kept on a leash behind the wheel of a convertible covered in snakeskin. Alongside a man one night, in the arms of a woman another, she who has two loves. In just a few years, Joséphine Baker forged her legend. She embraces the stage, imposes her freedom, enters into the imagination and into the intimacy of the French. " President Macron adds "By his never unconscious carelessness, his always cheerful courage, this lightness hemmed with sadness which those who have already lived, the American refugee in Paris, become the incarnation of the French spirit and the symbol of 'An era. Crèvecœur-le-Grand in the Oise, November 30, 1937. 84 years ago to the day. Joséphine has returned from a difficult tour of the United States. Segregation there is more severe than ever. marries Jean Lion and then officially becomes a French citizen. "The French have given me everything. Today I am ready to offer them my life": Joséphine Baker does not consider her new nationality as a right, but above all as a duty, a daily conquest. So she devotes herself entirely to her new homeland and to the defense of her values. Here she is an unwavering militant of the International League against Antisemitism since 1938. Then an army officer of the air, serving as a nurse in the framework of actions organized by the Red Cross. On the Maginot Line, she gave memorable concerts in support of the morale of the troops. As the Blitzkrieg led by Nazi Germany scares Europe, Josephine Baker wants to do more. Swapping the limelight for the flame of the Resistance, she became, even before June 18, "honorable correspondent". And serve his new country, risking his life. Protecting resistance fighters and Jews in his property in Milandes transformed into a radio antenna; President Macron completed with the heroic actions of Josephine Baker, which extended to the Maghreb, across the French borders. "She, who Receiving on her hospital bed in Casablanca all that the Maghreb has of officers of Free France; Traveling across Africa and Europe to transmit confidential information written in sympathetic ink on her sheet music or hidden in her dresses; Crossing the desert in a Jeep to galvanize the soldiers preparing for the Landing of Provence; 4 Joséphine played such a decisive role that she was awarded the Medal of the Resistance. Above all, the badge that she would prefer most of all, a small cross of Lorraine in gold received from General de Gaulle in 1943 and which she nevertheless ended up selling to donate the money to the works of the Resistance. Then in 1961, the Croix de Guerre with palm and the Legion of Honor awarded by General Valin. This is Josephine. A fight for free France. Without calculation. Without a quest for glory. Dedicated to our ideals. »Thus known President Macron about the accumulation of medals received by Joséphine Baker, well deserved.

JOSEPHINE BAKER THE ICONIC BELOVED AFTER THE LIBERATION, SHE DEFENDED THE CIVIC RIGHTS ALONGSIDE MARTIN LUTHER KING » EXPLAINED PDT MACRON------------------------------------------------------------ President Macron then recalls the historically strong and symbolic facts of the struggle of Josephine Baker, who after being raised to the rank of heroines of the French liberation, during the Second World War, returned in 1963, to defend the civil rights of Afro-Americians alongside Pastor Martin Luther King “Washington, August 28, 1963. While an icon adored after the Liberation, she could have, like many others, become famous, Joséphine Baker, uniform of the army of airs in the air, speaks in front of the thousands of civil rights activists awaiting Pastor Martin Luther King's speech. That day, which she defines as "the best day of her life", was for her the culmination of a long struggle. Advancing towards the desk, she is no doubt thinking of the little girl who, punished by her white masters for breaking a plate, had her hands scalded; Back in the day, even the star that she was was denied access to hotels in the United States. At that evening when, under the eyes of Grace Kelly who will never forget her, she was refused service at the Storck Club, a great New York restaurant. "

JOSEPHINE BAKER DID NOT DEFEND A SKIN COLOR BUT A CERTAIN IDEA OF MANKIND "SAID PRESIDENT MACRON------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ President Macron is very moved, betrayed by the tone of his voice and his gestures, and seems to be upset internally, he who regularly lends himself to introspection of the civilizational aspect of his speeches by the story of Josephine Baker, which we feel that he is imbued with so much abnegation and the human love of the most famous Franco-American, that he is bringing into the prestigious Pantheon, the or "The Party offers recognition to the men (and women) ) ". He then evokes how in New York the "Baker Day" was organized in 1951 "In the district of Harlem which had organized in her honor in 1951 a Baker Day to thank her for having opened its concerts to blacks as well as whites, To the thousands of women and men who had joined his fights. So, referring in her speech to her upcoming invitation to the White House, Joséphine Baker, yes, of course, remembers all that and declares to the crowd: "it is not the woman of color - the black one, who will go. the low. It's a woman ". Josephine Baker was not a defender of a skin color, she had a certain idea of ??man, and campaigned for the freedom of everyone. 5 Its cause was universalism, the unity of mankind. Equality of all before the Identity of each. Hospitality for all the differences united by the same will, the same dignity. Emancipation Against Summons. "Thus explained the head of state Macron, while continuing the powerful and courageous accounts of Josephine Baker, with multiple medals, insufficient even to describe the courage and the abnegation of this woman, Franco-American, become resistant, heroine, dancer, singer, and activist for peace and the acceptance of difference, and fervent defender of human rights. she was more French than ever. Infinitely fair. Infinitely fraternal. Infinitely from France. And may no one today lie or hijack his universal struggle! It wasn't a fight to assert yourself as black before defining yourself as American or French; it was not a fight to say the irreducibility of the dark cause, no. But well to be a citizen, free, worthy. Completely. Definitely. "

THE PRINCESS OF MONACO WELCOMES AND PROTECTS JOSEPHINE BAKER RUINED AND EXPELLED FROM THE CHATEAU DES MILANDES-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- President Macron concludes his speech with a reminder of the sad end from a material point of view of the Great Black Pearl, Josephine Baker who finds herself expelled from the Chateau des Milanais du Perigord and takes refuge in Monaco, hosted and protected by the Princess of Monaco: “Dordogne, March 15, 1969. Despite repeated tours, despite the courage and televised appeal of Brigitte BARDOT, despite the support of generous donors, Joséphine Baker was evicted from her famous property in the Périgord Noir: the Château des Milandes. Far from feathers and sequins, she takes refuge with her children in Paris, before gaining, Monsignor, the principality of Monaco where the princess, once again, become her protectress and her friend, offers her asylum and generously accommodates her. with all his family. On that day in March 1969, she not only said goodbye to a rootedness, to this landscape she loves so much, to her "Castle on the Moon" which she adored and occupied for more than thirty years. She said goodbye to a crazy dream, that of setting up in Milandes a "college of universal fraternity" where she wanted children from all over the world to be taught tolerance, secularism, a taste for equality and for fraternity. If this college never saw the light of day, the adoption with Jo Bouillon of 12 children - Akio and Teruya from Japan; Luis from Colombia; Jari from Finland; Jean-Claude, Moïse and Noël from France; Brian and Marianne from Algeria; Koffi from Ivory Coast; Tara from Venezuela: and Stellina from Morocco, yes, these twelve children, this family allowed Josephine Baker to prove to the world that skin colors, origins, religions could not only coexist but live in harmony. You are here tonight. True to his dreams. 6 Her "rainbow tribe" as she called it is the most beautiful of humanist manifestos. Epiphany of the universalism she believed in so much. Josephine Baker left her life as she left the stage, hours after the second performance of a magazine devoted to her life. It was in Bobino, in the heart of this Gaité district whose name suited him so well. A few days later, on April 15, 1975, thousands of Parisians walked up the rue Royale to accompany his coffin, already draped in blue-white-red, to this church of the Madeleine where France buries its artists. Today we are still there, even blue-white-red. To bring it into our Pantheon. So tonight, Joséphine Baker comes in here with all these artists who accompany her, all these artists who have loved jazz, dance, cubism, music, the freedom of those years. She enters here with all those who, like her, have seen France as a land to live in, a place where one would stop dreaming of elsewhere, a promise of emancipation. She enters here with all those who chose France, who loved her and love her, fleshly, who saw her stumble and continued to love her, who saw her on the ground and fought for raise it. French by the bloodshed, the battles waged, the love given. She comes here to remind us all, to remind ourselves, who are sometimes so obstinate in wanting to forget it, the elusive beauty of our collective destiny: we who are a Nation of combat, fraternal, that one desires, that one deserves, who is herself only when she is great and without fear. Joséphine Baker, You enter our Pantheon, where a breath of fantasy and daring rushes in with you. Yes, for the first time here, it's a certain idea of ??freedom, of celebration, which also comes in. You enter our Pantheon because you loved France, because you showed her a path that was truly hers but of which she nevertheless doubted. 7 You enter our Pantheon because, born American, there is no more French than you. And while at the end of your career, adapting the lyrics of your greatest success, you cry out: "My country is Paris", Each of us tonight is whispering this chorus, sounding like a hymn to love. : “My France is Joséphine”. Long live the Republic. Long live France. » Ended President Macron, as the ceremony ends up, over his last words of his speech.