Josephine Baker: the superstar turned spy who fought the Nazis and for civil rights

Josephine Baker: the superstar turned spy who fought the Nazis and for civil rights

Book highlights performer’s wartime contribution and how she used her fame to provide cover and promote equal rights

She was, according to US wartime counter-intelligence officer Lt Paul Jensen, “our No 1 contact in French Morocco”, supporting the allied mission “at great risk to her own life – and I mean that literally. We would have been quite helpless without her.”

The British intelligence agent Donald Darling had her down as an especially “cherished agent of [Charles] de Gaulle’s government”. Well aware of her importance, the UK foreign intelligence service MI6 called her “the pet lady agent” of the Free French.

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