Although their numbers have never surpassed a few thousand, African-Americans living in Paris have forever altered the French cultural landscape. Their strong roots go back to World War I, when black soldiers stayed on in France, seeing greater opportunity there than at home.
Countless artists carved out a place in the City of Light. Henry Ossawa Tanner was one of the first and most respected black painters who flourished in the early 1900s. Others included Beauford Delany, who lived in Paris for 20 years, and Loïs Mailou Jones, who spent only one year there in the 1930s but produced more than 50 paintings in that time.
Jazz was one of the earliest contributions of black musicians. As early as the 1920s, an African-American community grew up in response to the clamor for jazz performed by black musicians. In Montmartre, jazz clubs, black performers and a small but burgeoning African-American community prospered for decades. Such notable entertainers as singer and dancer Florence Mills and Ada Louise Smith—known as “Bricktop”—helped usher in a new era of black entertainment for Parisians from all walks of life.
At first, the French attraction to African-American performers was based upon an exotic primitivism, but over the years, more enlightened views about blacks emerged. Eventually, African-American musicians collaborated with the French, helping them create their own interpretation of jazz.
Over time, the heart of the African-American community shifted from Montmartre to the Left Bank’s Saint-Germain-des-Près and the Latin Quarter, as black writers became a significant force in French culture in the 1950s. Many of them contributed to a collective dialogue about race and decolonization within the expatriate African and Caribbean communities.
Political and cultural shifts in France during the 1960s and ’70s affected African-Americans living there. Racial tolerance seemed to slowly erode in the face of the war with Algeria and increased immigration from former colonies. Although structural economic changes created more opportunities for black professionals, writers and artists found it more difficult to afford living in Paris—and the city’s decline as the world’s art capital made it less attractive to them. Still, African-Americans remain integrated into almost every sector of Parisian society.
Terrance Pitts, ’87, is a freelance writer and photographer in Washington, D.C.
