As we celebrate Black History Month this October, the same names always come up in our school assemblies, history lessons and news feeds. This year I decided to research some lesser known heroes, and what I found really amazed me...

Josephine Baker was born in June 1906 in Missouri, America. She was brought up in a French-speaking home and moved to Paris aged 19 in an attempt to kickstart her career, where she became an instant success. Baker was publicly known for erotic dancing, while her costume – consisting of only a girdle of artificial bananas – became her most iconic image and a symbol of the 1920’s Jazz Age.

However, this is not even half of the incredible life that Josephine led. In September 1939, Baker was recruited by the French military intelligence as a spy, and charmed German, Japanese and Italian officials at parties while gathering information about the whereabouts of their troops. She did all of this without raising suspicion and managed to help the Frech military greatly.

On top of this, she supported the 1950’s civil rights movement and was the only woman to speak alongside Martin Luther King Jr at the 1963 Washington March. In 1974 Baker ended her career by performing in the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, before passing away the next year aged 68 in Paris, where her incredible journey started. Researching this inspiring woman has opened my eyes and shown me that there are so many incredible people throughout history that we never really knew about, and so hopefully soon we will broaden our spectrum of people taught and spoken about, not only in school but in our everyday lives too.

Beatrix Vessey