Josephine Baker enters Panthéon

The American-born dancer, singer, actress and civilrights activist Josephine Baker yesterday became the first black woman to enter France’s Panthéon mausoleum of revered historical figures, nearly half a century after her death.

Baker is only the sixth woman to be honoured in the secular temple to the “great men” – and, belatedly, the great women – of the French Republic, which lies on a hill on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris.