Josephine Baker receives one of France's highest honors

President Emmanuel Macron attended the ceremony, one of France's highest honors.

Baker, who also served in the French Resistance during World War Two and was a prominent civic rights activist after the war, is the first Black woman and sixth woman to enter the Pantheon.

Baker became a French citizen in 1937. She died in 1975 and was buried in Monaco. In accordance with her family's wishes, Baker's remains have not been moved to the Pantheon.

To represent her presence there, a symbolic coffin was carried to the steps of the mausoleum containing handfuls of earth from four locations: her U.S. hometown of St. Louis, Paris, Monaco and Milandes, in the Dordogne region of France, where Baker owned a castle.