40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

Khalid Elhassan - July 2, 2019

40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker and her third husband, industrialist Jean Lion. Life Buzz

20. She Became a French Citizen

After more than a decade of success and adulation in France and Europe, Josephine Baker was dismayed by the way she was treated, and the racism she endured, upon returning to her country of birth. She had changed, but America had not. In 1937, she returned to France broken hearted, and the experience contributed to her decision to abandon her US citizenship and become a French national, instead. Back in Paris, she married French industrialist Jean Lion, and got naturalized as a citizen of France.

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