La Revue Nègre

The house lights have gone down.

On the stage, a show called La Revue Nègre has been running for a while now, and the audience is polite, curious, a little restless.

Then the music changes.

A drum, a trumpet, and a nineteen-year-old girl from Missouri comes out from the wings with her knees bent and her eyes crossed, moving in a way no one in this room has ever seen.

Paris, then.

We are back where we started, in the autumn of nineteen twenty-five.

La Revue Nègre has made her famous, but it is the Folies Bergère that makes her a legend.

In nineteen twenty-six, she takes the stage there in a costume that will follow her through history.

It is greatly appreciated.

First up, though, on this date in 1925, entertainer extraordinaire Miss Josephine Baker made her historic Paris debut performing in La Revue Negre at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées.

Her performance took the city by storm, and it prompted her to permanently relocate to France, where she became a celebrated citizen, activist, and and a huge cultural icon.

In fact, she is the first Black American-born woman to be inducted into their pantheon.