Posted on 03/13/2014 3:24:41 PM PDT by EveningStar
Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, a former model, agent, charm-school director and newspaper publisher who almost single-handedly opened the modeling profession to African-Americans, and in so doing expanded public understanding of what American beauty looks like, died on Feb. 28 in Manhattan. She was 91.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
RIP.
Lena Horne did, too (b. 1917).
thank you for sharing this... it brought back memories of my going to “charm school” to be instructed in “social graces,” “voice and diction” and “poise and confidence” :)
I wonder what she thought of Naomi Campbell?
RIP
Today’s youth have Beyonce twerker extraordinaire.
Wow. Beautiful Lady. Good for her for doing so well in those times.
Gorgeous
Another trailblazer.
Let’s not forget Josephine Baker, who while scandalous for her era - at least in America - was not only the toast of Paris as the “Black Venus” or the “Black Pearl” but also a badass.
“In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence as an “honorable correspondent”. Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. She specialized in gatherings at embassies and ministries, charming people as she had always done, while gathering information. Her café-society fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats, and to report back what she heard. She attended parties at the Italian embassy without any suspicion falling on her and gathered information.[21]
When the Germans invaded France, Baker left Paris and went to the Château des Milandes, her home in the south of France. She housed friends who were eager to help the Free French effort led by Charles de Gaulle and supplied them with visas.[22] As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe, visiting neutral nations such as Portugal and some in South America, carrying information for transmission to England, about airfields, harbors, and German troop concentrations in the West of France. It would be written in invisible ink on Josephine’s sheet music.
Later in 1941, she and her entourage went to the French colonies in North Africa; the stated reason was Baker’s health (since she really was recovering from another case of pneumonia) but the real reason was to continue helping the Resistance. From a base in Morocco, she made tours of Spain and pinned notes with the information she gathered inside her underwear (counting on her celebrity to avoid a strip search) and made friends with the Pasha of Marrakesh, whose support helped her through a miscarriage (the last of several). After the miscarriage she developed an infection so severe it required a hysterectomy. However, the infection was not contained and she developed peritonitis and then septicemia. After her recovery (which she continued to fall in and out of), she started touring to entertain British, French, and American soldiers in North Africa. The Free French had no organized entertainment network for their troops so Baker and her friends managed for the most part on their own with no civilians and no admission charge. To this day, veterans greatly remember her performances.
After the war, for her underground activity, Baker received the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.
Josephine Baker died, aged 68, on April 12, 1975. Her funeral was held at L’Église de la Madeleine. The only American-born woman to ever receive full French military honors at her funeral, Baker locked up the streets of Paris one last time. She was interred at the Cimetière de Monaco in Monte Carlo.”
She was beautiful, and she carried out espionage against the Axis - a dangerous game, to put it mildly.
From the article...
As a charm-school director, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell taught dress, diction and deportment to thousands of students, including the future actress Diahann Carroll...Besides tending to her pupils outwardly through classes like Wardrobe I, II and III; Social Graces; and Figure Control With Fencing and Ballet, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell designed a curriculum to bolster them inwardly, offering a counterweight to the tradition of internalized self-hatred that was many black Americans’ legacy.
Dress, diction, deportment, Wardrobe, Social Graces and Figure Control. Imagine someone trying to teach this, today.
Stunning. Beautiful.
What a beautiful woman.Sad about her life.
Thank you, Ophelia, for expanding our horizons.
That’s a great picture of her. I never knew she did all that spy stuff. If I ever have to do another “Black History Month” report, I’ll do it on her. (The only one I ever did was on George Washington Carver, a truly great man - how fitting I chose a person who is not a famous as he should be because he was not a big lib like a bunch of lib whites think he should have been, and I didn’t find that out for years and years, and it was a pretty liberal - but smart and honest - white guy who explained it to me.)
“Imagine someone trying to teach this, today.”
Yes, to any one, white black male female!
RIP to this fine woman who strove to make the world a better place.
Maybe the next generation will bring some of this back. They aren’t ALL slackers.
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