- [Jim] Long after her passing, Josephine Baker proves she can still draw a crowd, including the president of France.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The story of a Missourian at an Olympics, mired in politics, and questions of gender.

- [Sharon] Underneath Helen's picture was "Is this a man or a woman?"

- [Jim] And St. Louis TV is 75 years old.

And while we weren't there, we remember the people who were.

- I was the first person, first woman on television in 1947, we just sort of walked up and down and asked different people what they thought of television, and of course, they couldn't give very concise answers.

Nobody had a receiver.

- The primary consideration is how we were going to fill the time.

- [Jim] It's all next on Living St. Louis (upbeat music) - We don't usually start off with a story from Paris, France, but what happened there recently is at least in part a St. Louis story.

You're about to see a ceremony, an honor given by the French to Josephine Baker.

An amazing epilogue to an amazing life that started in poverty here in St. Louis.

Ruth Ezell on where that life has finally taken Josephine Baker.

(applause) - [Ruth] Leave it to Josephine Baker to draw a cheering crowd in Paris decades after her death.

The arrival of Baker's flag draped ceremonial coffin on November 30th, 2021, marked the historic induction of the St. Louis native into the Pantheon, France's tomb of heroes.

The posthumous honor is the highest France bestows to recognize the life and legacy of its most revered citizens.

Baker became a French citizen after she married one in 1937.

French television broadcasted the event around the world.

It was the culmination of a years long campaign to win Josephine Baker the designation.

She rose to fame there as a trailblazing entertainer in the 1920s, but Baker was also a decorated war hero who fought in the French resistance during World War II, and was an activist for civil rights in the land of her birth.

A petition drive to honor baker in this way was launched in the summer of 2021, and it gathered some 40,000 signatures of supportive French citizens.

That drew the attention of president Emmanuel Macron.

In August, he announced Baker would enter the famed mausoleum, and thus she became the first black woman to be inducted.

At the Pantheon ceremony, president Macron praised Baker and her achievements.

- [Translator] That's is Josephine, one who fought for France's freedom without ulterior motives, without seeking greater glory.

One devoted to our ideals.

- [Ruth] All of this did not go unnoticed in St. Louis, where a more modest program honoring Baker was presented at the Missouri History Museum the same day.

♪ Josephine Baker ♪ Josephine Baker - Speakers included the French Consulate General for the Midwest, Yannick Tagand.

- Today, France distinguishes an exceptional personality, born American, who chose to become French and to set her struggle for freedom and justice within the context of France's fight for the humanist and universal principles which are at the core of my country's identity.

Josephine Baker's personal history is remarkable, is exemplary.

It shows us what a human being can achieve through willingness and determination to ensure its own emancipation and to offer it as a model to others and to the world.

- [Ruth] The consolute general was referring in part to the poverty, suffering, and racism baker endured in the early 20th century, before she fled St. Louis with a Vaudeville troop in search of a better life.

She witnessed firsthand black residents of East St. Louis, Illinois fleeing the violence of white mobs during the infamous 1917 riots.

Cicely Hunter is public historian for the museum's African-American history initiative.

- It was those experiences here in St. Louis that really made Josephine Baker who she was and cultivated her as an individual to continue to push those boundaries further and pursue what she felt was the career that she had.

But she had so many layers to her, so it's important not to just think about her as an entertainer, because she was so much more than that.

- [Ruth] At the request of her family, Josephine Baker's remains are still in Monaco, where she was buried after her death in 1975.

Inside the Pantheon coffin are handfuls of soil from the places Baker lived over the course of her life, including her hometown.

And where, you might ask, did the St. Louis soil come from?

According to her spokesperson for mayor Tishaura Jones, from the grounds of city hall.

(woman sings in French) - Years ago, I got to work on a documentary about the history of broadcasting in St. Louis and had the opportunity to talk to some people, most of them gone now, who invented television.

I don't mean the technology.

I mean they invented how to use it.

Well, it turns out 75 years ago, February of 1947, St. Louis got its very first TV station, Channel Five KSD, now KSDK TV.

So once again, we turned to those folks who started it all.

- [Jim] The man who brought television to St. Louis was Post-Dispatch and KSD radio executive George Burback, who had seen a television demonstration in London in 1936 and went to work to bring it home.

When the war was over, the Post-Dispatch was in the front of the line.

The paper put KSD Channel Five on the air in 1947.

Keith Gunther was one of those who was hired to figure out just what to do with it.

- The primary consideration is how we were going to fill the time that we had indicated on the so-called program schedules, and pulling together events, something as simple as a fashion show.

It was a constant struggle to come up with material to put in front of that camera.

It was all live, nothing recorded.

- [Jim] One popular television special was coverage of the Veiled Prophet Ball and Parade, a St. Louis broadcasting staple since early radio.

Before this, back in 1946, KSD conducted an experimental broadcast of the Veiled Prophet pageantry.

It was viewed by Post-Dispatch executives and a group of people in an auditorium.

It was not, however, St. Louis' first look at television.

KWK Radio had conducted a demonstration in 1932.

There was another preview in 1939, when Kay Morton was just getting started in her radio career.

- I was still on a WTMV then in 1939, I think it was Dumont rather than, yeah, it was Dumont did a demonstration of live television at the auditorium and famous bar, and those of us who were in the broadcast business were asked to come over.

And we had to wear purple lipstick, but it was interesting.

And then they broadcast into the auditorium from the stage of a famous bar.

- [Jim] In 1947, when KSD TV officially went on the air, it was once again the radio performers, like singer Dottye Bennett, who got the call.

- I was the first person, first woman on television in 1947.

February, it was February of '47, and there were three of us.

It was Frank Ashon, who's since deceased, and Don Ward from Chicago, and myself.

And we walked up and down Olive Street.

It was called the Man on the Street Show because there were no shows, per se.

We just sort of walked up and down and asked different people what they thought of television, and of course, they couldn't give very concise answers.

Nobody had a receiver.

- [Jim] One hour and 20 minutes of television broadcast, it is said, to a grand total of four television sets in St. Louis.

Since nobody could build these things at home like they could those first radios, KSD and its performers weren't just doing television.

They were promoting it.

That was one of Harry Gibbs jobs before he became better known as Texas Bruce.

- Most of the TV sets in the town were in department store windows and appliance dealers stores.

And Union Electric has a big, had, and still does have a big stake in anything that uses that much electricity, obviously.

So they wanted to provide something for the appliance dealers that they could show people.

Something besides a test pattern.

So what they did, the appliance dealer would have what they called a party.

They would invite people, customers, former customers, customers they hoped they'd have, to this gathering at the appliance dealer store.

And then at a specific time, Dottye and I'd call them and we'd do this quiz show.

There may have been other people watching, but this was beamed specifically to that appliance dealer store.

- [Man] Steve, where you at, Steve?

Steve, where's Steve?

What are you doing down there?

- I was measuring his box to make sure it's a true 20 cubic foot box.

- [Man] Well do this commercial, will you?

- All right.

When the Mizeranys tell you something, it's sold.

- [Jim] it wasn't worth it for Steve Mizerany to do television commercials until enough people had the TVs to watch him.

- I used to go door to door selling them.

I get on the streetcar and go door to door to try and sell them.

We had to go around.

We went to taverns and start selling TV then.

The taverns were for sports and that, and we sold TVs, and we had to put an outdoor antenna up.

We had to do things like that, you know, to get the guys interested.

- We did baseball games.

We did St. Louis Browns baseball games, Cardinal baseball games, and we did a great many of them, frequently on a daily basis.

So this provided a big hunk of programming, so to speak.

- [Jim] Those early telecasts were nothing like today's, which require an army of technicians and enough cameras and equipment to supply that first TV station several times over.

Gunther worked with just two cameras, and he sat right between them directing the shots.

- The story goes that we were charged for two box seats, which amounted to about 5 or $10 a game.

But you know what the television rights are today.

- [Jim] Not only was KSD TV the first station on the air in St. Louis 75 years ago, it would be the only station longer than expected.

Because in 1948, the FCC decided it needed to address issues of station distribution and signal interference, among other things, and a planned six month freeze on new stations lasted until 1952.

Until then, when it came to TV, St. Louisins never had the option of changing the channel.

- Finally, the Olympic games in China bring to mind the story of a Missouri athlete who went to the Olympics.

She was one of the best track stars in the world, but as long ago as this happened, it sounds familiar.

The games were complicated by issues of politics, and long before the age of preferred pronouns, questions and controversy about gender.

Brooke Butler on the story of the Fulton Flash.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Announcer] Gloom descended on Germany when a member of the German women's 400 meter relay race, right out of the fatherland, dropped the baton.

A jubilant crowd sure of another gold medal saw victory turn into tragedy and defeat.

The girls proved they were genuine women by bursting into tears on the field.

- [Brooke] Did you catch that?

The girls proved they were genuine women by bursting into tears on the field.

But we'll come back to that later.

Let's see who won the race.

- [Announcer] Helen Stephens was the key member of the winning American team.

- Helen Stephens.

Ever heard of her?

She was once the fastest woman runner in the world, and she was from Fulton.

She won two Olympic gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, had a sketchy encounter with Adolf Hitler, and this was all at the age of 18.

But even at 68, she was only four seconds slower than her 1936 record when she competed in the Senior Olympics.

In fact, she never lost a race.

She was the first woman to create, own, and manage a semi-professional basketball team, paving the way for countless women athletes.

So why isn't she more recognized?

Was this the Olympic diary?

- This is the Olympic diary, 1936.

- [Brooke] That's Sharon Kinney Hanson, and we're at the State Historical Society in Columbia, Missouri, looking through the Helen Stephens collection.

- [Sharon] Look at these, they're huge.

- [Brooke] Sharon is Helen's only authorized biographer who studied many of these items, putting together the detailed life story for her book, The Fulton Flash.

Logging over 70 interviews with Helen herself, they grew to become close friends up until Helen's death in 1994.

- Helen knew what she wanted to be when she was young.

She wanted to be an athlete.

She wanted to get a job in that area.

That was atypical for a girl.

The best she could do is join a basketball team that the church offered, because her school did not have any athletic programs for girls.

- [Brooke] It was while Helen was playing on the basketball team that the Fulton High School's track and field coach, Coach Moore, observed Helen's incredible speed and intense competitive nature.

Coach Moore decided to test her athletic capabilities by gathering a group of girls to run the 50 yard dash.

To his surprise, Helen ran the dash in just 5.8 seconds, which was the world record at the time.

Shocked at this discovery, he had her run it again.

5.8 seconds.

His stopwatch wasn't broken.

He had just discovered an athletic prodigy.

From there, as you can imagine, Coach Moore did everything in his power to shape Helen into the star competitive runner he knew she naturally could be.

After some pushback from the superintendent who wasn't keen on sending a young girl to such a publicized race, Helen was entered to compete at the National Amateur Athletic Union at the St. Louis Arena.

Although a complete beginner, 17 year old Helen was confident, even among the seasoned Olympians who would also be at the race, including Stella Walsh, who was the first woman to run the 100 yard dash in under 11 seconds.

A native to Poland, Stella was nicknamed the Polish Flyer, and was a crowd favorite, that is until Helen entered the game.

With first place wins in the shotput and standing broad jump, the bets were on as Helen lined up against Stella in the 50 yard dash.

Helen took the lead, and victory was hers in just 6.6 seconds.

- At the end of the finish line, a reporter rushed up to her and said, "You know what you've just done?"

And then Helen, using her Midwestern drawl on purpose, "I think I won," she said.

She knew who Stella Walsh was, but she had said "Who?"

You just beat Stella Walsh.

Who?

And she knew who Stella was because she had a picture of her in her room and she was throwing darts at it.

She intended to beat her, and she did.

- [Brooke] It's the definition of an underdog story.

Helen had become famous overnight with newspaper headlines, attention from elite athletic clubs.

She was even thrown a ticker tape parade on what Fulton High School declared Helen Stephens' Day.

And of course, being hailed her famous nickname, the Fulton Flash.

Having proved herself a natural champion, she was an obvious choice to join the US Olympic women's track and field team.

But as Helen kept up for rigorous training, there was growing controversy over where the Olympic games were being hosted.

- [Helen] This is Helen Stephens speaking.

- [Brooke] This audio recording of Helen was collected by the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum in 1984 as part of their oral history project.

Helen wasn't Jewish, but her experience during the Berlin Olympics was worth collecting.

- [Helen] President Roosevelt did not want us to go to Berlin.

He was opposed to it because of the policies of Adolf Hitler.

- [Interviewer] Was well known at that time, I assume.

- [Helen] Well, let's say, I think it was published, but people tended to shrug it off and say, "It's none of our affair.

It's not our business.

That's their problem."

- [Brooke] But of course, Helen and the US Olympic team still attended.

She claimed the athletes earned a right to compete regardless of any political connotations.

And while we're on the subject, before we get into Helen's gold medal wins, let's talk about her encounter with Hitler.

During the Olympics, Hitler became known to invite certain winners after their events into his private booth where he watched the competitions.

Helen was most likely the only member of the US team to receive the invitation.

As press caught wind of these intimate meetings, a photographer snuck in and snapped a picture just after Helen greeted Hitler with a good old fashioned Missouri handshake.

And when I say intimate meetings, I mean Helen recalls Hitler making a pass at her, and even inappropriately touching her.

- He had his troopers that were around him, protecting him, throw him out and grab his camera, but somehow the film made it.

- [Brooke] And that caused some controversy- - [Sharon] Yes, it did.

- [Brooke] because they see this picture, I think she was asking for his autograph in the picture.

- [Sharon] Yes, yes.

- [Brooke] And you know, that to people doesn't send the right message.

- No, but the fact is she was getting autographs of everybody that she could, as was the custom then.

Autographs were big.

And can you imagine what that little booklet might be worth today?

- [Brooke] It's true.

Helen requested autographs from almost everyone she met.

J. Edgar Hoover, Jesse Owens, and even her arch rival, Stella Walsh.

Ever since Helen outran Stella in St. Louis, there was growing tension and anticipation for the two sprinters to face off again.

After a couple no-shows from Stella for a rematch prior to the Olympics, it was finally time to prove whether the feat was a fluke.

And of course, Helen won.

Not only did she outrun Stella that day, she stripped her of her world record title by running the 100 meter dash and 11.4 seconds.

- Can you imagine?

An 18 year old.

She must've felt glorious.

She was nervous, she said, on top of that, standing on the podium when she was being the crowned and given the metal and so forth.

Her knees are knocking and she was very proud.

And she stomped Stella again, which was her goal.

- [Brooke] Helen was on top of the world.

She was welcomed back to the United States with parades, and parties, and mobs of fans.

Coming back to Fulton, however, swiftly brought the celebrations to an end.

- When she came home, one of her girlfriends sent her a page from the Look Magazine that had a foldout, and in it was Helen running in her stride, and underneath Helen's picture was, "Is this a man or a woman?"

That's what started the whole, let's call it a decline in Helen's morale.

- [Brooke] It wasn't just Helen who was facing controversy over her gender.

Remember this clip?

The girls proved that they were genuine women by bursting into tears on the field.

During the Olympics, it was customary for the women athletes to get physical exams before competing to ensure they were, in fact, the gender they claimed.

Most women athletes could brush it off, but here was the problem for Helen.

She was a lesbian.

She had been having romantic relationships with women for years by this point.

Controversial for that time, but Helen never suspected it would affect her athletic career.

But, of course, it did At the time of the Olympics, Helen was attending William Woods University on an athletic scholarship.

But when word got out about the article in Look Magazine and rumors of late night female visitors, she was called into the president's office where he called her an embarrassment to the university, revoked her athletic scholarship, and forced her to move off campus.

But Helen was resilient, and the university clearly came to realize her important contributions to the field of athletics by naming their sports complex after Helen.

- I talked to Helen about how I did want to out Helen.

I wrote the book when gay people were in the closet, and Helen was in the closet all her life.

And I did not want to be the one to out her.

I wanted to tell her story, her contributions to women in the field of athletics, which is what I did.

But after I got into the book quite deeply, I said, "We cannot leave out Mabel."

- [Brooke] Mabel was Helen's life partner of 40 years, and although the relationship was known to the people closest to them, they didn't want it to be widely publicized.

But Helen included details of her romantic life in her diaries, and as Sharon said, she couldn't tell Helen's story without including those details, because after all, it was part of her identity.

After some time playing professional basketball and softball, Helen met Mabel in the early days of what would turn out to be her long career as reference librarian at the Aerospace Center in St. Louis.

But she always maintained her athletic involvement and was ultimately inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

What do you hope people learn from Helen?

- Well, I want them to recognize that she was definitely the pioneer in women's athletics.

There were others, but Helen stayed in the game all through her life.

She was in Show-Me State Games, the Senior Games.

She was the self appointed secretary for the Midwest Olympic Committee, raising money for other women to go to the Olympics.

She gave clinics, free without cost, in St. Louis for young, aspiring Olympians, women.

She was advocating politically, writing letters to legislators, trying to help the women get what they deserved, respect and entrance into the games.

It's a different generation.

I guess we have to expect that not everybody enjoys history, right?

But women athletes here know her name.

(upbeat music) - And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we'll see you next time.

- [Ruth] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation, the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan Charitable Trust, and by the members of Nine PBS.

(upbeat music)