Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture. In the 1934 film Zouzou, Baker solidified her status as an international superstar with the iconic "Shadow Dance." While it looks like a simple lighting trick, it was actually a complex special effect. The shadow was pre-filmed and projected onto a screen behind her, requiring Baker to memorize the timing perfectly to interact with her "digital" twin. It is a level of multimedia coordination that predates the modern music video by nearly 50 years. Zouzou was Baker's first "talkie" film and marked the first time a Black woman starred in a major international feature film. Baker was known for her "Danse Sauvage" and comic facial expressions, which she used to subvert the exoticized tropes placed on Black performers in France at the time. Beyond her entertainment career, Baker was a French Resistance agent during WWII and a civil rights activist who spoke at the March on Washington.