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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
1
Keep It Simple: Spring-Cleaning for Success
2
Enjoy Spring Weather — Even From Work
2
How Traumatic Brain Injury Can Affect Vision
3
Someone Sued Michael Jordan?
3
Simple Bok Choy Chicken Soup
4
Celebrating St. Louis Native Josephine Baker
became a highly successful performer. Her unique costumes and fast-paced dancing style endeared her to audiences, and she became most famous for dancing in a skirt made out of bananas. When the Germans invaded France in World War II, Baker didn’t take the occupation lying down. She began collecting intelligence, reasoning “nobody would think I’m a spy.” She attended parties with Axis military officials and performed for Nazi soldiers. All the while, she took notes on what she heard, recorded them in invisible ink, and passed them along to the Allies. Decades later, she told Ebony magazine, “An overriding consideration, the thing that drove me as strongly as did patriotism, was my violent hatred of discrimination in any form.” Upon returning to the U.S. in 1951, Baker was shocked by a level of racism she hadn’t endured in decades. She aimed to fight it just as fiercely as she had fought the Nazis, and she refused to play segregated shows. Her popularity resulted in many promoters relenting and integrating their audiences. Later, she participated in the 1963 March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and was one of the only women to speak that day. Baker eventually adopted 12 children and died in her sleep after a performance in 1975. Her legacy lives on as a pioneer for all women and Black Americans: an iconic performer, a French spy, a civil rights activist — and a St. Louis native.
CELEBRATING ST. LOUIS NATIVE JOSEPHINE BAKER Performer, Activist, and Spy
St. Louis boasts a long line of notable women, including writers Maya Angelou and Kate Chopin, actors Betty Grable and Agnes Moorehead, and musical superstar Tina Turner. But this Women’s History Month, we want to celebrate the remarkable life of one specific trailblazer, Josephine Baker. Born in St. Louis in 1906 as Freda Josephine McDonald, Baker grew up poor and worked from a young age to help support the family. Like her parents, however, she was an entertainer at heart. When work was unavailable, Baker would dance in the street for pocket change. She had talent, and soon she was doing theater, dancing, and comedic skits in front of audiences. Baker moved to New York and was a part of the Harlem Renaissance happening among Black artists in the 1920s.
After two failed marriages while she was still a teenager (one of which gave her the name Baker), she moved to Paris in 1925 and
Practicing in Missouri and Illinois
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