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Best Known For
Josephine Baker was a dancer and singer who became wildly popular in France during the 1920s. She also devoted much of her life to fighting racism.
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Mick Jagger - Mini Biography (4:00)
Josephine Baker - The Activist Entertainer
Josephine Baker fought for racial equality as a performer in the 1920s and '30s. Learn the steps that this dancer took in the fight against discrimination.
Ernest Hemingway - Mini Biography
Ernest Hemingway was one of the most important writers of the 20th Century. His brief writing style in his novels "A Farewell to Arms," "The Sun Also Rises," and "The Old Man and the Sea" changed literature forever.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Mini Biography
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most famous authors of the Jazz Age, best known for his novel "The Great Gatsby." After reaching success, he struggled with alcoholism and died at the age of 44.
Mick Jagger - Mini Biography
As lead singer of "The Rolling Stones," Mick Jagger has become one of the biggest rock stars of all time. Despite his love/hate relationship with fellow bandmate Keith Richards, Jagger has performed with the band for over 50 years.
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Play NowJosephine Baker. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 07:12, Jun 20, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959.
Josephine Baker. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959 [Accessed 20 Jun 2013].
"Josephine Baker." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Jun 20 2013, 07:12 http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959.
"Josephine Baker," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959 [accessed Jun 20, 2013].
"Josephine Baker," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959 (accessed Jun 20, 2013).
Josephine Baker [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 Jun 20] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959.
Josephine Baker, http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959 (last visited Jun 20, 2013).
Josephine Baker. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959. Accessed Jun 20, 2013.
Just days later, on April 12, 1975, Baker died in her sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 69.
On the day of her funeral, more than 20,000 people lined the streets of Paris to witness the procession, and the French government honored her with a 21-gun salute, making Baker the first American woman in history to be buried in France with military honors.
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African-American Expats
View groupMany African-Americans left their country to escape the confines of racism, segregation and McCarthyism in the United States. As a result, an entirely new African-American subculture sprouted up in Europe, Africa and other countries abroad. A street in Paris is named after Josephine Baker, who found acceptance and fame in France that she couldn't achieve in the still-segregated United States. Marcus Garvey was a leader of the Back-to-Africa movement. And singer Nina Simone lived in several different countries, including Liberia, Switzerland, England and Barbados before eventually settling down in the South of France. Find out more about these African-American expats, and the new lives they made for themselves abroad, on Biography.com.
African-American Expats 9 people in this group
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Famous Jazz Musicians
View groupWith its roots in the blues, jazz has been referred to as America's classical music, yet has also become a major global phenomenon, branching off into a variety of forms. Earlier pioneers like Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton paved the way for the swinging big-band sounds of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. In contrast, contemporaries Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk developed bebop, with its speedy, dissonant harmonies and improvisations. And Miles Davis heralded the birth of cool jazz, modal jazz and fusion at different points in his career. Famous jazz instrumentalists have tended to be male, yet women have been at the forefront of the genre when it comes to vocalization, from the brassy blues of Bessie Smith to the haunting eclecticism of Nina Simone.
Famous Jazz Musicians 29 people in this group
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Famous Geminis 530 people in this group
