French-American singer and dancer, Josephine Baker will be the first black woman to be entered into Paris’s Panthéon mausoleum.
“This is a great lady, who loved France, who will enter the Pantheon. Thank you to @EmmanuelMacron for this tribute,” wrote Government Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher on Twitter, confirming earlier media reports.
The Panthéon is a burial place for celebrated French icons such as scientist Marie Curie and writer Victor Hugo.
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Baker will be just the sixth woman to join some 80 national heroes.
Born St Louis, Missouri in 1906, Baker went on to find fame in the 1920s after moving to France to pursue a career in the show business as many Black Americans stayed on in the French capital after World War One and brought over with them American jazz culture.
She served in the French Resistance during World War Two and had a role in the civil rights movement in the US.
She used her celebrity connections to gather information on German troop movements which she passed on, scribbled on musical scores.
In 1963, she took part in the March on Washington alongside civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, when he delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
She died in 1975 and received Military honors at her funeral. Baker’s body was buried in Monaco.
French President Emmanuel Macron approved Baker’s induction after a campaign led by her family and a petition with about 38,000 signatures.
Baker’s family had been requesting her induction since 2013, but only the president can approve entrants to the monument.
Her remains will be re-buried at the Pantheon on November 30 where she will lie alongside other French national icons in the mausoleum such as authors Emile Zola and Victor Hugo, the philosopher Voltaire and politician Simone Veil.
