another case of pneumonia) but the real reason was to continue helping the Resistance. From a base in Morocco, she made tours of Spain and pinned notes with the information she gathered inside her underwear (counting on her celebrity to avoid a strip search) and made friends with the Pasha of Marrakesh, whose support helped her through a miscarriage (the last of several) and emergency hysterectomy she had to go through in 1942. Despite the state of medicine in that time and place, she recovered, and started touring to entertain Allied soldiers in North Africa. She even persuaded Egypt's King Farouk to make a public appearance at one of her concerts, a subtle indication of which side his officially neutral country leaned toward. Later, she would perform at Buchenwald for the liberated inmates who were too frail to be moved. Baker became the first American-born woman to receive the highest French military honor, the Croix de guerre.
After 1942, she went to North Africa.
In January 1966, she was invited by Fidel Castro to perform at the Teatro Musical de La Habana in Havana, Cuba. Her spectacular show in April of that year led to record breaking attendance. In 1973, Baker opened at Carnegie Hall to a standing ovation. She had finally received in the U.S. the recognition long accorded her in Europe.
Civil rights activism
Although based in France, Baker supported the American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. She protested in her own way against racism, adopting 12 multi-ethnic orphans, who she called the "Rainbow Tribe." They were: Akio (Korean son), Jeannot, or Janot (Japanese son), Luis (Colombian son), Jari (Finnish son), Jean-Claude (French son), Moïse (Israeli son), Brahim (Algerian son), Marianne (French daughter), Koffi (Ivorian son), Mara (Venezuelan son), Noël (French son), and Stellina (Moroccan daughter). For some time she lived with all of her children and an enormous staff in a castle, Château de Milandes, in Dordogne, France. Baker bore only one child, stillborn in 1941, an incident that precipitated an emergency hysterectomy.
She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. Her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate shows in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In 1951, Baker made charges of racism against Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club in New York, where she had been refused service. Actress Grace Kelly, who was at the club at the time, rushed over to Baker, took her by the arm and stormed out with her entire party, vowing to never return (and she never did). The two women became close friends after the incident. Testament to this was made evident when Baker was near bankruptcy and was offered a villa and financial assistance by Kelly (who by then was princess consort of Rainier III of Monaco).
Baker also worked with the NAACP. In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of Martin Luther King, Jr. Wearing her Free French uniform emblazoned with her medal of the Légion d'honneur, she was the only woman to speak at the rally. After King's assassination, his widow Coretta Scott King approached Baker in Holland to ask if she would take her husband's place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. After many days of thinking it over, Baker declined, saying her children were "… too young to lose their mother."
There is evidence to suggest that she was bisexual. One of her adopted sons, Jean-Claude Baker, writing in his book Josephine: The Hungry Heart, states that she was involved in numerous lesbian affairs, both while she was single and married, and mentions six of her female lovers by name. Clara Smith, Evelyn Sheppard, Bessie Allison, Ada "Bricktop" Smith, and Mildred Smallwood were all African-American women she met while touring on the black performing circuit early in her career. She was also involved with the writer Colette, and possibly with Caroline Dudley Reagan, who ran the Paris extravaganza La Revue Nègre.
Not mentioned, but confirmed since, was her affair with Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Baker wrote that affairs with women were not uncommon with Josephine th