This week, performer Josephine Baker received one of France's highest honors, by being posthumously inducted into the Panthéon in Paris. Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, the entertainer and activist who would go on to become world-famous as Josephine Baker became one of fewer than 100 people inducted into the nation's mausoleum of heroes—making her not only the first Black woman in history to receive the honor, but also the first American and the first performing artist.

For the ceremony, presided over by French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday evening, members of Baker's family, celebrities, politicians, and even Monaco's Prince Albert attended to remember the artist, who moved to France at age 19, in 1925. Over the ensuing years, she became a prominent figure in the French performance scene, starring on stage as a dancer and singer, and eventually becoming the first Black woman to star in a feature film, the 1927 silent "La Sirène des Tropiques."

"She broke down barriers," Macron said. "She became part of the hearts and minds of French people ... Josephine Baker, you enter the Pantheon because while you were born American, deep down there was no one more French than you."

Though the star's body will remain where it was interred in in Monaco after her death in 1975 at the age of 68, a coffin bearing handfuls of dirt from important locations in Baker's life was carried during the ceremony as her song "J'ai deux amours" ("I Have Two Loves") played. A new plaque will memorialize her contributions in Paris's Panthéon.

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Lauren Hubbard
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Lauren Hubbard is a freelance writer and Town & Country contributor who covers beauty, shopping, entertainment, travel, home decor, wine, and cocktails.