Josephine Baker to be honored on U.S. stamp

Josephine Baker, the gorgeous Black singer/dancer whose beauty mesmerized France and the rest of Europe during the 1920s and ’30s, is the latest African American to be memorialized on a U.S. postage stamp. Baker’s movie, “Princess Tam-Tam,” is among the five images on the stamps to honor vintage Black cinema. New Jersey, the home of a Black film festival, will hold ceremonies marking to commemorate the sale of the stamps. “I guess that if she was with us today she would be very honored. At her death she was a French citizen, but she never forgot she was born in America,” her son, Jean-Claude Baker, told The Associated Press in an interview. “She would be delighted and very moved.” In addition to her acclaimed singing and dancing, Josephine Baker earned military honors as an undercover agent for the French resistance in World War II. During the 1950s and ’60s, she was active in the Civil Rights Movement, even making an appearance with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. source