5). Josephine Baker (1906-1975) became an exotic Jazz Age performer during the 1920s. “I was taught to believe that I was inferior like many colored people of the world,” she recalled. But she rejected the status quo and used her performing arts skills to relocate to Paris, escaping the debilitating effects of United States Jim Crow laws. She became an African-American superstar noted for her quirky charm as a dancer in La Revue Nègre.
