{"id":158330,"date":"2023-05-12T12:11:12","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T11:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buzzsouthafrica.com\/us\/?p=158330"},"modified":"2023-05-12T12:11:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T11:11:17","slug":"who-are-josephine-bakers-children-and-where-are-they-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buzzsouthafrica.com\/us\/who-are-josephine-bakers-children-and-where-are-they-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Are Josephine Baker\u2019s Children and Where Are They Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josephine Baker has twelve children. They are Akio, Jean-Claude, Janot, Marianne, Mara, No\u00ebl, Koffi, Luis, Jari, Mo\u00efse, Brian, and Stellina. All of the late dancer’s children were adopted from different parts of the world. Baker’s decision to adopt was influenced by her desire to prove that people from different ethnic groups could co-exist in harmony.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9phine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald, June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French singer, actress, and dancer. She is also notable for her contribution to the Civil Rights movement of the Dr. Martin Luther King era.<\/p>\n

As previously stated, her decision to adopt kids from various parts of the world was influenced by that movement, and that choice invariably put the spotlight on those kids. That was years ago, and one can’t help but wonder what became of Jos\u00e9phine Baker’s twelve children. Read on to find out.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9phine Baker’s Only Biological Child was Stillborn<\/strong><\/h2>\n

According to Jos\u00e9phine Baker’s fourth husband, Jo Bouillon, the singer had the distinct privilege of actually having her only biological child in 1941. Unfortunately, the child in question came out stillborn, and the incident led to an emergency hysterectomy that put paid to any hopes of Baker ever having a child of her own.<\/p>\n

As indicated earlier, Jos\u00e9phine Baker was married four times in her lifetime and had several other sexual partners, one of whom was Robert Brady, whom she was involved with for a couple of years from 1973 to 1975. The first of those four marriages, to a porter who worked with American Pullman named Willie Wells, was contracted in 1919 when the actress was only thirteen years old.<\/p>\n

According to several reliable sources, the unhappy union failed and ended the same year it began, in a divorce. A couple of years later, in 1921, the singer hitched her marriage wagon to William Howard Baker. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925 after just four years, but Jos\u00e9phine chose to retain the Baker surname because of her career.<\/p>\n

\"Josephine<\/a>
Josephine Baker\u2019s Children with her husband, Jo Bouillon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a series of other nonmarital sexual relationships, Baker married her third husband, Frenchman Jean Lion, in 1937. However, the union lasted just three years before ending in 1940. Seven years later, she exchanged marital vows with Jo Bouillon, a French composer and the last man Jos\u00e9phine ever called husband.<\/p>\n

It is fitting that their marriage lasted longer than all her three previous marriages combined before ending in 1961, fourteen years after it began. Her quest to adopt children began in the early 1950s during her marriage to Bouillon and at the beginning of her involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n

Her model of adoption encapsulated all her beliefs about acceptance and harmony, a fact exemplified by her decision to adopt her first child, a son named Akio, from Japan. Over the next decade or so, the singer adopted eleven more children, and they became her famous “Rainbow Tribe”.<\/p>\n

What has become of Akio, Jean-Claude, Janot, Marianne, Mara, No\u00ebl, Koffi, Luis, Jari, Mo\u00efse, Brian, and Stellina, the 12 kids who formed Jos\u00e9phine Baker’s Rainbow Tribe?<\/p>\n

Akio Bouillon-Baker was the First Child Josephine Baker Adopted<\/strong><\/h2>\n