already more than 5,600 signatures for a petition proposing to create a Joséphine Baker street
In the context of Joséphine Baker’s upcoming entry into the Pantheon, an Annecy resident has launched a petition proposing to create a street in her honor in the city. And he has already found the location. The debate has begun.
An Annécien has managed to collect several thousand signatures around his project: to create a street in honor of Joséphine Baker in Annecy! A tribute that the capital of Haute-Savoie owes, according to him, to this figure of the Resistance and the anti-racist fight who will soon enter the Pantheon.
Franco-American artist Joséphine Baker, performer of the famous song I have two loves, will enter the Pantheon on November 30th. She will be the first black woman to be buried there and the fifth woman to be buried there. This announcement marked Vincent Baissat-Szlingier, himself Franco-American, from a family that suffered the roundups of the Occupation.
This is how this young professor of history and geography, living in Annecy since his childhood, decided to propose renaming a street in Annecy. “It would be a beautiful symbol to consider, through Josephine Baker, the struggle of women against Nazi barbarism “, he argues.
And the location of Joséphine Baker Street is everything according to Vincent. He proposes that his name replace that of Henry Bordeaux, a writer who supported Philippe Pétain during the Occupation. “It’s an example, he explains, the opportunity to wonder, are all the names that we honor in this way relevant? ” He believes that we must make room for women who have marked the history of France and for diversity.
The debate has begun. To date, more than 5,600 people have learned of their support for Vincent’s project by signing the petition. Among them, several elected Annecy, Fabienne Grébert, Marion Lafarie and Cécile Boly in particular.