Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker left the segregated United States for Paris in 1925 and became a star of the Folies Bergère within two years. She took French citizenship, worked for the French Resistance during the Second World War, and was later decorated for it; in 2021 she became the first Black woman honoured in the Panthéon. France gave her a career that American racism had denied her, and she repaid it.