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    "headline": "Josephine Baker spied for the French Resistance, hiding notes in invisible ink on her sheet music",
    "description": "Josephine Baker spied for the French Resistance in World War II, carrying intelligence in invisible ink on her sheet music across Europe and Africa.",
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    "articleSection": "History",
    "keywords": "Château des Milandes, French Resistance, Jacques Abtey, Josephine Baker, World War II",
    "articleBody": "Josephine Baker, the St. Louis-born star who had Paris at her feet in the 1920s, spent World War II as a spy. She carried Allied intelligence across borders written in invisible ink on her own sheet music, and her château in southwest France hid Resistance fighters and a radio transmitter. How far her work reached stayed largely out of view until 2020, when French documents were declassified showing she had also worked with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service and the American Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. From Folies Bergère headliner to “honorable correspondent” Baker arrived in Paris in 1925 and became one of the defining faces of the Jazz Age. Her lead role in Siren of the Tropics, a 1927 French silent film, made her the first Black woman to headline a major feature film. Ernest Hemingway called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” She became a French citizen in 1937. When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, the Deuxième Bureau, France’s military intelligence service, signed her up as an “honorable correspondent.” Her contact was Jacques Abtey, who ran counterintelligence in Paris. According to the CIA’s account of her life, she agreed by raising a glass of champagne and toasting “To France!” Fame was her cover. Baker moved through embassy parties, ministries and nightclubs, chatting with German, Italian, Japanese and Vichy officials and passing on what she heard. She also held a pilot’s license and flew missions during the Phoney War, the quiet months before Germany invaded France. Three ways she moved secrets Invisible ink on sheet music: notes on airfields, harbors and German troop concentrations rode along with her songs as she toured. On her body: she wrote notes on her hands and arms and pinned papers inside her clothes when crossing borders. Through her home: the Château des Milandes in the Dordogne sheltered Resistance fighters and refugees, held a radio for contact with the Allies, and stored weapons in its cellar. When the Germans grew suspicious and visited the château, she talked her way out of trouble, then left France with Abtey. They traveled through Lisbon, and in 1941 she set up in North Africa. From Morocco she toured Spain and kept gathering information. The CIA says what she passed on about tides, beaches and enemy defenses helped support Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. She also entertained British, French and American troops across North Africa, largely on her own, since the Free French had no organized entertainment network. Her shows charged no admission and were closed to civilians. The medals, and the money she never took Baker returned to liberated Paris in the uniform of a lieutenant in the French Air Auxiliary. She sold jewelry to buy food for the poor, and the CIA notes that she never asked for or received payment for her wartime work. After the war she received the Resistance Medal, the Croix de Guerre, and was made a knight of the Legion of Honour by Charles de Gaulle. A second fight at home Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. At the 1963 March on Washington she stood near Martin Luther King Jr. and told the crowd: “I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents… But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.” Her wartime story sits alongside other Black Americans whose service was long underrated, from the Harlem Hellfighters of World War I to the Tuskegee Airmen’s bomber escort record. Her screen breakthrough also belongs beside that of Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman nominated for the best actress Oscar. Baker died in Paris in April 1975 and is buried in Monaco. On November 30, 2021, France inducted her into the Panthéon, the first Black woman given that honor, with a cenotaph placed in vault 13 of its crypt. Further reading Wikipedia: Josephine Baker CIA: Josephine Baker: From Poverty to Stardom to Espionage Image: MOSSOT, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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