It was cold. It had been too hot in New York. All I had was a little coat that was barely there. I caught a bad cold. In the port, there was our huge boat among lots of little ones. Around the city were tiny trams, small but so sweet, those little trams!
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There was no time to lose. We ran from customs to the special train that was waiting for us, already letting off steam in the station. I didn’t have French money; I gave twenty dollars to a porter.
“No, madame,” he said. “No, I don’t want it, not good.” So I gave him thirty, and he took it.
The same day, September 22, four hours later: Paris.
How lucky—it was raining! That was a good sign. If it’s raining in a city where you find yourself for the first time, that’s good luck. Oh, it was so funny! Little houses, little streets, little sidewalks. “I’ll never be able to dance here,” I thought. “This is all too small. Where are New York’s long, straight lines?”
The French were immediately kind. Every sort of person took a liking to me, to us.
And I didn’t know French at all. And I’d only brought ridiculous little dresses like the ones young American girls wear with flat shoes.
In France, the houses are small, but women’s heels are very high.
*
Let me tell you what I wore when I went for my first walk around Paris.
My outfit made everybody laugh. Now I understand why everybody laughed, and I laugh about it more than all of them.
Imagine…
I wore a checked dress with pockets, held up by two checked straps that went over my checked blouse.
I had a feathered hat perched on my head. And to top it all, I had a camera hanging down by my left buttock and a huge pair of binoculars by my right. I’ve never known why but when Americans go to a foreign country, they must always have binoculars and a camera swinging behind them.
I wore bobby socks and flat heels.
Ah, I looked so pretty that day, to go and see the Arc de Triomphe and Napoleon’s tomb!
*
I will always remember our first rehearsal for La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. They still didn’t know about the Charleston. The room was dark, the stage was lit up. There were twenty people sitting in the first row.
Hello, Charleston! The stagehands were watching, the two fire officers were astounded. They weren’t used to trombones hitting them in the stomach like that.
Furthest away, behind the flats, the youngest ones were trying to copy us. They wanted to dance the Charleston! When no one was looking, they were shaking their flanneled legs, they were kicking the air—and the co-worker next to them, too.
All the theater staff came to watch us secretly: the typists were looking through a hole in the backdrop, the two fire officers were laughing into their helmets, the twenty people in the front row were jiggling their legs…The Charleston had already got a hold of them; they had ants in their shoes.
Yes sir, that’s my baby.
*
Europeans first saw the Charleston danced by Negroes. They invented another version that’s hardly anything like the original, but it is very good. You’re supposed to dance the Charleston wearing strings of shells that shake against your skin and make a dry sound. But I replaced the shells with bananas and feathers.
You’ve got to dance with your hips, one then the other, one foot over the other, sticking out your buttocks and waving your arms…We’ve been hiding our buttocks too much for too long. Buttocks exist. I don’t know why we dislike them. There are also buttocks that are terribly silly, of course, terribly pretentious, terribly mediocre. All they are good for is sitting on, if that.
*
The French were immediately kind. Every sort of person took a liking to me, to us.
La Revue Nègre.
Poor Douglas, I danced with him. He was extraordinary.
He’s dead now.
He was like rubber.
I can still hear the soles of his shoes clicking in my ears.
Louis Douglas, he could imitate any sound in the world, a racehorse, a railway, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, in front of a black backdrop with a little white church. His lips were white, too. He also had a pink collar, and he really did dance in silence. He’s dead now, poor Doug…
Well, I thought he was dead, but he’s alive. I heard he was spending time in Marseille. I’m so happy to hear that.
Doug should go back to America and put together a new Negro troupe! You still don’t know everything that Negroes have to offer.
*
Have we said enough about Paris’s place in the world and life in Paris?
I soon understood Paris, and I loved it passionately.
Paris is elegance, mayhem, love, champagne and pretty trinkets, the Eiffel Tower. Spirit and heart, wouldn’t you say? And thousands of other things, thousands of other adjectives. I soon understood Paris, and I loved it passionately. To begin, Paris adopted me from the very first night. It celebrated me, gave me everything…Loved me, too, I hope. Paris is dance, and I love dance.
Pretty women, pretty dresses. The seasons would present them to us one after the other. Here he is: Spring, the latest addition, the child who will soon become Prince Summer!
Paris is women, sun, midnight sun. The Bois, tea, dance halls, shopping, cabaret.
A woman…
Is she the same one? I don’t recognize her. This morning she was so ordinary, so covered up in a rather plain dress, and now here she is tonight, all flesh and pearls.
I love Paris, how it moves, how it sounds, its mystery—its mysteries—all its mysteries. I’m not simply parroting out the same old compliments, I’m trying to understand…to imagine…
Where could they go, all these women I come across? Busy women, relaxed women, smiling, worried. Is it work? An obsession with work and time ticking by? Meeting a lover? An important errand—the couturier, most likely? What a telltale I am, but yes, the couturier, then the lover, because she needs to look her best. But love can dress her better than any couturier.
A small woman with short hair, driving down a dusty, dirty road in a big car, eyes straight ahead, brow furrowed. But soon she’ll be at the restaurant, her face relaxed, and how she will laugh! Dinners at the water’s edge, the River Seine, the Marne and the Oise, or under the trees. Smiles, eyes filled with promise. Going home at night. Faint shadows, flashing headlights, lying in his arms for a while when it’s cold.
Nighttime, champagne, joy, frenzy, more dancing, flowers, women.
Never horrid, never stupid, never ordinary…Vive Paris!
But I know that there are poor people, too, and I think about them…
__________________________________
From Fearless and Free: A Memoir by Josephine Baker. Originally published in French by Éditions Corrêa in France as Les Mémoires De Joséphine Baker by Marcel Sauvage, in 1949. Reissued in French by Éditions Phébus, in 2022. First English language edition simultaneously published with Vintage UK, a division of Penguin Random House Group, in 2025. Copyright © 2022 by Éditions Phébus/Libella, Paris. Translation copyright © 2025 by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis. Foreword copyright © 2025 by Ijeoma Oluo. Available from Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
