#antifa #WWII #LGBTQI #history

"The Black queer icon who spied on Nazis, flew a WWII plane, & was also a vaudeville superstar

To fans, Josephine Baker was the ultimate sex symbol. But behind the scenes, she played a crucial role in the second World War.

Draped conspicuously in feathers and furs, photographer’s flashbulbs illuminating the phalanx of jewels around her neck, no one, least of all the Nazis, pegged Josephine Baker — Europe’s biggest star and the richest Black woman of her generation — as a spy. But that was the plot’s genius. And given the audacious chameleon’s ability to switch between globally famous sex symbol, queer icon, and polarizing civils rights advocate, few people were more qualified for the revolutionary gig than the famed 'Nefertiti of Now,' as Pablo Picasso called her.

Rags to riches tales rarely start slummier than Baker’s. Born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906, her life began in East St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother was a half-Black, half-Apalachee laborer with three other children to raise on a 'colored' washerwoman’s pay, making every meal a struggle to obtain. Josephine would later describe dancing on street corners 'just to keep warm,' accompanied by Blues buskers begging for coins. As a 10-year-old, she experienced 1917’s bloody St. Louis Race Riots firsthand, watching white men hunt Black citizens publicly.

'We children stood huddled together in bewilderment, not being able to understand the horrible madness of mob violence,' Baker wrote years later. 'St. Louis represented fear, humiliation, misery, and terror, a city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in.'

The experience unsurprisingly motivated young Baker to get out of Missouri quickly. By age 13, she’d already dropped out of school and married a porter named Willie Wells. Their legal union lasted just a few weeks, with Baker ricocheting into the Black vaudeville circuit for comfort and capital. There, she collected two valuable assets: Blues singer Clara Smith, who became Josephine’s first performance mentor and 'lady lover'; and her second husband Willie Baker, whose last name she would keep for life.

Baker’s formative years in vaudeville taught her not only how to leverage sex appeal, but also the art of satire. A gifted physical comedienne, by 1923 she’d secured a slot in the famed jazz musical revue Shuffle Along, a landmark production that delivered Broadway’s first all-Black creative team.

The show, as touring often does, powerfully influenced Baker’s emerging queer identity. As Maude Russell, one of Baker’s fellow chorus girls, later told The Gay and Lesbian Review: 'Often… we girls would share a [boardinghouse] room because of the cost. Many of us had been kind of abused by producers, directors, leading men, if they liked girls. And the girls needed tenderness, so we had girl friendships, the famous ‘lady lovers.’ But lesbians weren’t well accepted in show business, they were called ‘bull dykers.’ I guess we were bisexual, is what you would call us today.'

(. . .)

The Paris of the Roaring 20s was hardly colorblind, but its thriving bohemia, hunger for “Black art” like jazz and Blues, and relaxed position on segregation made the city a welcome respite for Baker. As part of La Revue Negre, she joined the ranks of performers like Duke Ellington and Paul Robeson, all paid and treated better in Paris for the same work they’d battled to do anywhere in the States.

Baker’s rise in Paris was stratospheric. When the 19-year-old stepped onstage at the legendary Folies-Bergere wearing nothing but a bikini adorned with glittering rhinestoned bananas, the crowd hit such a frenzy that Baker needed a dozen curtain calls before the show could continue. Her now famous 'Banana Dance was, of course, a little racist, framing the Missouri native as some kind of exotic African beauty. But Baker had curated the act herself as a subversive wink at her very white, very European audience, and she was given sensational reviews in return. It was a feat she’d repeat in another iconic number, 'The Plantation Dance,' while androgynously styled in overalls and a tattered cotton overshirt.

For the next decade, Baker’s 'Star is Born' arc captivated not just Paris but much of the world. Her shows sold out. Her cropped hair became so fashionable that Baker went full Rhianna, selling branded cosmetics and hair goo to help young girls emulate their idol. She founded and headlined her own successful nightclub, Chez Josephine, and married a hot Jewish sugar tycoon, all while allegedly having affairs with Frida Khalo, Bessie Smith, and Colette.

But then came fascism’s rise in the 1930s. Though Baker had the protection of wealth, she was still Black, queer, female, and married to a Jew during the ascent of Hitler. Everything about the Third Reich felt infuriatingly familiar to the race riot survivor.

Baker joined the Red Cross as a pilot — yes, she herself flew whole planes packed with provisions over mountains during a war — before being recruited for espionage work by French Intelligence agent Jacques Abtey. Pretending to scout locations for a cabaret tour of the Iberian Peninsula, the pair (he posed as her ballet instructor) carried secret photos of German troop positions to British allies stationed in Lisbon. When she completed that mission with flying colors, it was decided Baker could use her celebrity for projects like charming state secrets out of vital foreign dignitaries at fancy parties, including Benito Mussolini."

lgbtqnation.com/2024/02/the-bl…

Yesterday I visited Skepptuna church to look at a couple of runestones. Unfortunately the church was being renovated, and the main stone I wanted to look at was fenced in.

This is the runestone U 358, which is raised in memory of Folkbjörn that died in Greece. Possibly as he worked for the Varangian guard. The stone was probably carved by Gunnar, though there is no carved signature.

Transliteration:
fulkmar × lit × risa × stin × þina × iftiʀ × fulkbiarn × sun × sin × saʀ × itaþis × uk miþ krkum × kuþ × ialbi × ans × ot uk salu

Normalization:
Folkmarr let ræisa stæin þenna æftiʀ Folkbiorn, sun sinn. Saʀ ændaðis ok með Grikkium. Guð hialpi hans and ok salu

Translation:
Folkmarr had this stone raised in memory of Folkbjǫrn, his son. He also met his end among the Greeks. May God help his spirit and soul.

#runestone #history #viking #VikingAge

(LONG POST) Fell down a fascinating rabbit hole today about a few little boys and a little girl in ancient China about 2100 years ago.

Emperor Wu went mad with paranoia in his old age, accusing everyone of using witchcraft against him. This led to him needlessly launching attacks on his own eldest son, who never intended to betray him, and the prince's own sons. This whole branch of the royal household was wiped out in the attack. Except... there was a baby. A brand new baby boy, only a few weeks old, the Emperor's great-grandchild. The baby's name was Bingyi.

Someone brought baby Bingyi to a prison rather than kill him as ordered. The prison warden personally took good care of him; when word got out and he was ordered to finish the job, he refused to kill the baby, knowing it would presumably cost him his life. However, the Emperor came to his senses and stopped the witch hunt. The order to kill baby Bingyi and this random prison warden along with him never came. Bingyi safely disappeared into the household of distant relatives, to live an ordinary middle-class life.

Emperor Wu died of old age, and his dying wish was for the crown to skip over all the sons he distrusted and go straight to the only one not yet old enough to have earned his distrust, the surprise offspring of a May-December fling. Emperor Zhao was still a small child. He was immediately married-on-paper to another small child, Lady Shangguan.

A few years later, Lady Shangguan's family was accused of planning a coup by Zhao's regent and executed, but she was spared on account of being too young to have possibly been in on it.

Zhao was, apparently, a completely reasonable and level-headed young man. He showed wisdom in dealing with court rumors and did not do the ridiculous things young people with power often do. When he found out that Bingyi was alive, he visited with the other boy, treated him with kindness and made sure his needs were met.

Unfortunately, Zhao dropped dead when he was 20. (No indications of foul play, he was just unlucky). He had no children; his marriage to Lady Shangguan may not have even ever been consummated. The Empress Dowager was 15 years old.

A nephew of Zhao was brought in to be the new emperor; he was slightly older than Lady Shangguan, at 17. And he... partied. Immediately. Extremely. Incessantly. He was hinted to stop. He was told to stop. He was told more boldly and explicitly to stop. He did not stop.

An entire 27 days after this loser nephew took the throne, Lady Shangguan put on her best dress, entered the court, sat down on the throne, and called for the nephew. He came in. She unrolled a list of over 1000 complaints that had accrued since he arrived at the palace. She fired him. A 15-year-old girl with no actual hard power fired the Emperor of China in front of all his ministers. And he turned around, left, and went home.

(And in a very Ancient Chinese approach, he was allowed to live but most of his attendants were executed for allowing him to grow into such a brat. Only a handful who were known to have boldly rebuked him were spared.)

Lady Shangguan was now in direct defacto control of the empire. However, she understood that trying to hold on to that for the rest of her life would be destabilizing, since her claims were paper-thin as the childless widow of a child-emperor, whose family was already executed for treason. She sent for Bingyi.

Bingyi ruled under the name Emperor Xuan, and is considered to have been one of the wisest emperors, being possessed of common sense and moral sympathy for the poor after a heathy, normal upbringing. Lady Shangguan quietly stepped back after thus saving the empire from disastrous misrule, never remarried, and was pretty much the only person on either side of her family to never get executed, exiled or driven to unalive.

Lady Shangguan: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Em…

Emperor Zhao: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_…

Bingyi / Emperor Xuan: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_…

Loser Nephew: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_H…

#history #longpost