She said, by documented accounts, that this day, that day at the march, was the happiest day of her life. She said she was not afraid to tell those gathered that she loved them. She described seeing the gathering as evidence that the dream she had been carrying — the dream she had demonstrated at the Château des Milandes, the dream she had expressed through the Rainbow Tribe — was not hers alone.
King spoke after her. His speech, which became the most quoted address in American history, shared the platform with hers. The uniform she wore — the uniform of the army that had defeated the ideology that the march was opposing — was visible in the photographs that documented the day.
She had spent the morning of August 28 knowing that the country she was standing in had banned her for a decade for doing exactly what she was doing now: insisting publicly that the racial structure of American life was wrong and had to change. She was standing there anyway.
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## The Last Years
The final decade of Josephine Baker’s life — from the loss of the Château des Milandes in 1969 to her death in 1975 — was defined by a combination of financial constraint, continued performing, and the gradual rehabilitation of her reputation in the country of her birth.
The loss of the château was devastating. She had spent two decades building the Rainbow Tribe there, developing the estate, investing everything she had in the demonstration it represented. The bailiffs who came to remove her — she was physically present when the eviction occurred, and French news reports covered the scene — did not care about what the château had meant or what it represented. The debts were real; the law was clear; she had to go.