Barbara Chase-Riboud is listing the only three Black American women to have ever been awarded the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit: “There’s Josephine Baker, there’s Dr Ruth Simmons, who was the president of Brown University, and there’s me.”
As a sculptor, novelist, poet and occasional fashion model, Chase-Riboud had, in a fanciful way, been eyeing up the award since her childhood in Philadelphia. “As a little girl I learned about Josephine Baker as a war hero, and that she had the Légion d’honneur. I decided that was the one decoration I really wanted to have in life. And finally, I got it this year, at the same time Josephine was entered into the French Pantheon!”
