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Josephine Baker is remembered by most people as the flamboyant African American entertainer who earned fame and fortune in Paris in the 1920s.  Yet through much of her later life, Baker became a vocal opponent of  segregation and discrimination, often initiating one-woman protests against racial injustice.  In 1963, at the age of 57, Baker flew in from France, her adopted homeland, to appear before the largest audience in her career, the 250,000 gathered at the March on Washington.  Wearing her uniform of the French Resistance, of which she was active in World War II, she and Daisy Bates were the only women to address the audience. Baker spoke just before Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” oration. What she said appears below. Friends and family…you know I have lived a long time and I have come a long way.  And you must know now that what I did, I did originally for myself.  Then later, as these things began happening to me, I wondered if they were happening to you, and then I knew they must be.  And I knew that you had no way to defend yourselves, as I had. And as I continued to […]