came to Paris on a mission: I wanted to compile an anthology of contemporary African American expatriate writers living in the city of light. But in some ways, the voyage felt more like a rite of passage. As an African American writer myself, this was my way of following in the footsteps of my literary ancestors. What I found was a longer, and more complicated, history than I had been prepared for, as well as an uncertain future.
African Americans have traveled and moved to Paris for centuries, often to escape the continuous racism in the States. Dating back to the early 1700’s, wealthy French colonists sent their mixed-race sons and their black or mixed-race mistresses to Paris to be educated, at a time when it was illegal in most of the U.S. for black people to even learn to read. The gens de color, as they were called, made up a middle class of sorts in many French colonies, such as New Orleans and Haiti.
During the WWII era, African American soldiers brought with them to Paris both liberation from Nazi control, and the bourgeoning art and music of the Harlem Renaissance. There’s a story of an African American military regiment marching through the streets of Paris, while playing a jazzy version of La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem, something that the citizens hadn’t heard since the German take-over years before—and certainly never in that style. Parisians greeted African American soldiers with great enthusiasm, equal enthusiasm — no small thing when compared with the then segregated ranks of the American military.