The remains of Josephine Baker, a famed French-American dancer, singer and actress who also fought in the French resistance during the Second World War, will be moved to the Pantheon mausoleum in November, an aide to President Emmanuel Macron announced.
It will make Baker, who was born in Missouri in 1906 and buried in Monaco in 1975, the first Black woman to be laid to rest in the hallowed Parisian monument.
From a poor background and married twice by the age of 15, she ran away from home to join a vaudeville troupe, where she was quickly spotted and became the star of the hugely popular La Revue Negre, becoming the highest-paid performer in the Paris music hall scene of the Roaring Twenties.
