Meet Josephine Baker: a Black bisexual goddess who dated Frida Kahlo and helped defeat the Nazis

An icon in every sense of the word, Josephine Baker is the bisexual goddess we all truly aspire to be.

She dated Frida Kahlo, was a top cabaret dancer and helped to defeat the Nazis in France through her work as a resistance spy.

The extraordinary American hero wasn’t always destined for greatness though.

Born into poverty in St. Louis in 1906, Josephine Baker started work at the ripe age of eight to help support her family.

She dropped out of school and worked as a cleaner for a wealthy white family, whom she lived with.

By the age of thirteen, she was married for the first time and working as a waitress.

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Related: Meet the Spanish lesbians who got married under the nose of the Catholic Church in 1901

To earn extra money, Josephine Baker danced on street corners – marking the start of her career as an entertainer.

At 15, she married a second time after moving to New York where she started dancing in clubs in Harlem.

Here, Baker began to explore her sexuality and had her first relationship with blues singer Clara Smith.