Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes

Tom and I visited Nantes for the inaugural weekend of the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery. The work that the city has done to come to terms with its past as a major profiteer of the slave trade is nothing short of remarkable! Read about the memorial and a comprehensive museum exhibit about the slave trade below.

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Exit from memorial viewed from below
© Discover Paris!
Open to the public after the official inauguration that was held on Sunday, March 25, the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes is a commemorative site built for reflection on the role that the city played in the slave trade, as well as for calling attention to the plight of the millions of people who live a life of forced labor today. From the 17th to the 19th century Nantes was a prosperous city due in large part to its participation in the triangular trade, sending the greatest number of French slave ships from its ports to Africa and then to the Americas. The opening of the memorial marks a great step in the city’s efforts to acknowledge this past (which was ignored for years), to educate its citizens about it, and to reconcile with it.

Located on the Loire River, Nantes had a booming maritime industry for centuries and profited from its proximity to the Atlantic. Prior to engaging in the slave trade, it opened trade routes to the Far East and the French colonies in North America.

The project for the memorial was launched in 1998 after the vandalization of a statue that had been erected in honor of the 150th anniversary of the permanent abolition of slavery in France. (Slavery in France was first abolished in 1789, re-established under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, and definitively abolished in 1848.) The proposal submitted by artist Krzystof Wodiczko and architect Julian Bonder was accepted in 2005, and construction began in 2008.

The memorial consists of two levels along an esplanade measuring 7,000 square meters (75,350 square feet) on quai de la Fosse on the north bank of the Loire. On the ground level are 2000 transparent plaques embedded in concrete, 1710 of which bear the names of individual ships that left Nantes for the purpose of acquiring slaves and selling them in the French Caribbean. The other 290 plaques present the names of slave ports in Africa and ports of origin for slave ships in Europe, such as Liverpool, England.

Plaque on the Esplanade
Photo from Abolition Esclavage Press Kit
Jean-Dominique Billaud, photographer
A steep flight of stairs leads to the lower level, which is a long passage under the quay that evokes the hold of a slave ship. Visitors descend the stairs to read proclamations imprinted on glass slabs, including Article 4 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Other slabs bearing quotations from various official documents and declarations from individuals such as Nelson Mandela, Franz Fanon, and Martin Luther King Jr. line the passage. Together the slabs of glass form a single unit that protrudes above ground at a 45° angle, representing the historic rupture of the world with the practice of slavery. Words such as “freedom” and “slave” are displayed on these slabs in as many as 48 languages.

Panel displaying Article 4 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man
© Discover Paris!
At one end of the underground passage, a window looks out onto the Palais de Justice (the municipal court house) that lies across the river. A room in red and black at the other end displays the dates that slavery was abolished in various countries around the world.

View of Palais de Justice
© Discover Paris!

Room Presenting Timeline of the Abolition of Slavery
© Discover Paris!
The memorial cost at least 6,900,000 € to build. (I have seen one document stating that the cost was as much as 7,580,000 €.) It was financed with European, local, and regional funds. The French national government declined to provide financial support for the memorial, even though it is the only one of its kind in Europe.

I strongly recommend a visit the Museum of the History of Nantes prior to visiting the memorial to get a true sense of the significance of the memorial itself with regard to Nantes and its collective memory about its role in the slave trade. Of the thirty-two rooms there, twelve contain information and artifacts pertaining to the slave trade and seven are completely dedicated to the subject. The museum is located in the Château des Ducs de Bretagne (Castle of the Dukes of Brittany).

Château des Ducs de Bretagne
© Discover Paris!
While the memorial is a site for reflection, the museum is a site for education. Several interactive displays present information in multiple languages, including English. Models of slave ships, a miniature sugar plantation, and examples of the implements used to restrain and punish slaves are among the items displayed there. Prominently displayed historical documents provide important detail about the slave trade. These include bills of sale, illustrations of the cargo hauled on slave ships (including the distribution of slaves in the space between decks), and shipping lists that indicate the number of slaves captured, those allotted as “bonuses” to the captain and crew, those dying during transport, and the final number sold. At least one document indicates the length of time (several months) that a ship spent on the western coast of Africa acquiring a “full load” of cargo prior to setting sale for the Antilles.

One room displays luxury items that successful slavers could hope to acquire through their trade. Porcelain dishes, furniture made of mahogany, and a silver chocolatier (a pot created specifically for serving chocolate) are exhibited here. In another room, a portrait of a successful slaver, aristocrat Pierre Grégoire de Roulhac, shows him feeding a morsel of sugar to his dogs. This gesture would be equivalent to feeding dogs caviar today.

The “slave-trade circuit” display in the museum is extremely well presented and could easily take a half-day to explore thoroughly. The museum’s bookstore has an impressive collection of publications on slavery, the slave trade, and related topics. All books are in French.

Château Bookstore
© Discover Paris!
Along the 1.5 km (0.9 mile) route between the museum and the memorial, the city has erected eleven illustrated panels that present the history of Nantes’ slave trade. Images on these panels are taken from items on permanent display at the museum. A brief English-language translation is provided at the bottom of each panel.

Of particular interest along the route is Ile Feydeau, an area where many successful slave traders purchased property for their sumptuous personal residences and where many merchants sold merchandise made from raw materials brought back from the French Antilles during the third leg of slave trading voyages. Several buildings on this small stretch of land (which was once surrounded by water) are adorned with mascarons – stone carvings that depict the faces of persons from foreign lands (including Africa), representations of the Greek god Neptune (god of the sea), and likenesses of owners and their families. A panel that presents a brief history of the merchants stands on the south side of the island.

Ile Feydeau negroid "mascaron"
© Discover Paris!

Panel on Ile Feydeau
© Discover Paris!
Nantes is a mere 2 hours and 15 minutes from Paris by high speed train (TGV). The city is clean and easy to navigate, and the people are friendly. The château (where the museum is located) is a five-minute walk from the train station and the memorial is three tram stops on line 1 from the château. A walk between the château and the memorial takes roughly one-half hour. A visit to Nantes to see the pertinent sites of the history of the slave trade (the Museum of the History of Nantes, the panels, and the memorial) can easily be done in a day.

Château at dusk
© Discover Paris!

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Paris Noire: A Book Review

If you are thinking about moving to Paris or wondering what it is like to live there, then you'll want to read the stories of sixteen long-time African-American and Afro-Caribbean residents in the recently released e-publication Black Paris Profiles. Click here to learn more!

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Paris Noire is a novel written by Francine Thomas Howard. It tells the story of a strong and proud Martinican woman, Marie-Thérèse Brillard, who has raised a son and a daughter, Christophe and Colette, alone in Paris. We enter their family saga in 1944, just prior to the liberation of Paris, when Christophe meets a woman who will change his life forever. Unbeknownst to him, his beloved Genviève is the wife of a member of the Resistance - a man who wills himself to survive so that he can return to her side. Colette has a love interest as well, a French man who she plans to wed.

Marie-Thérèse also meets someone who will change her life - an American lieutenant who makes her feel as no man, not even her deceased French husband, has ever made her feel before. Add to the mix a wilting flower of a Senegalese girl who Marie-Thérèse would have Christophe marry, an African-American songstress who cozied up to a German colonel to extract information important to the Resistance, and her French butler/bodyguard who is also a saxophone player, and the stage is set for what is a unique and engaging tale.

Though numerous scenes take place around the city, we are never made to feel that Paris herself is a character in the book. The deprivations of war are emphasized much more than is the beauty and mystique of Paris. Much of the story unfolds in Montmartre, where the Brillards and Glovia, the songstress, live.

Issues of race percolate through the novel, but do not dominate. The book intermingles several tales of love - the love of a mother for her children, a cuckolded husband for his wife, star-crossed lovers for each other - and illustrates the brutality that can emerge when love is betrayed. The story becomes increasingly suspenseful as it builds to a climax that is both refreshingly unexpected and tragic.

Francine Thomas Howard
Photo from Meet Francine Thomas Howard blog
Author Francine Thomas Howard is a resident of the San Francisco bay area. She took early retirement from her career as a pediatric occupational therapist to devote her life to writing. Her next project is a five-book series spanning three-hundred years and two continents. The protagonists are three young women of noble birth from Timbuktu who are kidnapped in 1706 and sold into slavery in New Orleans, and their descendants.

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Remembering Loïs Mailou Jones

Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) was an African-American artist from a well-to-do Boston family. She is said to be the most notable African American to study art in Paris in the 1930s, and is perhaps the most illustrious African-American woman ever to have studied here.

Loïs Mailou Jones
Photo from National Archives and Records Administration
Jones worked for Carter G. Woodson for several years, providing illustrations for his books and periodicals. In 1937, while teaching at Howard University, she received a General Education Board Fellowship to study at Académie Julian in Paris. She took advantage of her first sabbatical year at Howard to do so. Woodson went to the pier to see Jones off when she took her first voyage to France aboard the S.S. Normandie on September 1, 1937. When she set sail, she already had an assignment to complete – she was to create illustrations for Woodson’s book African Heroes and Heroines.

In accepting the General Education Board Fellowship, Jones was able to fulfill a long-term desire to go to Paris. Years earlier, her mentor, African-American sculptor Meta Warwick Fuller (1896-1968), advised Jones that she would need to go abroad to launch a successful career. Fuller was living proof of this as she had studied in Paris herself, attending the Académie des Beaux Arts (Paris’ classical art school) in 1899. In 1901, she was introduced to Auguste Rodin, who took her on as a student. With his sponsorship, Fuller made significant progress in her career. When she returned to the United States in the fall of 1902, she had seen 22 of her sculptures exhibited in Samuel Bing’s Galerie de l’Art Nouveau in Paris. Rodin insured that an enlargement of one of these pieces was accepted for display at the Sociéte National des Beaux Arts Salon in 1903.

Thus, Jones emulated Fuller by studying in the French capital. She had a lush studio apartment on rue Campagne Première during her one-year stay. There were three levels, a terrace and a roof garden. Floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall allowed light in - perfect conditions for an artist!

The directors of the Académie Julien appointed one of Jones’ fellow students to help her with her French, and her professors showed interest in her talent. She worked to reproduce the Impressionist style of one of her favorite teachers there, and produced many landscape paintings of Paris. Among these were several Paris street scenes, including boulevard St. Michel, the Moulin Rouge, and the Luxembourg Garden. But she also painted in the Cubist style, depicting black subjects in two works entitled Les Fetiches and Jeanne, Martiniquaise. She saw many of her still lifes and street scenes accepted at art salons and galleries in 1938.

Les Fetiches
Loïs Mailou Jones
1938 Oil on linen
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Like Fuller, Jones also studied at the Académie des Beaux Arts and the Académie Colarossi during her sabbatical year.

Twenty-four years later, Jones returned to Paris as leader of Howard University’s first study abroad program in France; this included a three-week course at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, the famous art institute in Montparnasse. She taught at Howard until 1977, when she retired.

Black Paris Profiles™:Velma Bury – Part 2

Last week, you learned about Velma's arrival in the south of France and how she and her late husband Pol established their home in Paris. This week, I present Velma's activities as professor and art enthusiast, and talk of her appreciations of living in Paris.

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Velma at home
© Discover Paris!
Among her many activities as an art enthusiast, Velma taught a course at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts for ten years. Because she knew that students would need to communicate in English for the year abroad that they were required to complete for graduation, she created a formal training course on English vocabulary in relation to fine arts and presented it to the school’s director. Her course began somewhat less than auspiciously due to some anti-American sentiment among the faculty, but it rapidly grew in popularity and became one of the most sought-after classes at the institute.

Velma eventually incorporated a one-week cultural trip to New York into the curriculum for her students, where she used her New York connections to create one-of-a-kind experiences for her students. Every April, she introduced them to the “behind the scenes” world of private collectors by organizing visits in collectors’ homes and arranging for private visits to the best museums. She also introduced them to the “other side” of New York – the seamier neighborhoods and even the prisons. Her students found these trips to be immensely valuable from both a professional and personal perspective.

When asked how Paris ranks in importance in the contemporary art world, Velma responded that the center of the art world is “nowhere and everywhere” today. She says that while it is still prestigious to have works exhibited at a show in Paris, the Belgians and the Germans are some of the most avid collectors of art in Europe today. She has observed that people go to galleries less frequently to purchase art, preferring to attend auctions and art fairs such as Art Basel and FIAC because of their social prestige. She also notes that the Internet has contributed to the irreversible change in the business of art.

While Velma does not consider herself to be a talented artist, she loves sketching. She has taken drawing lessons for years, beginning with the Nicolas Poussin art school just a couple of doors down from her home on boulevard Raspail. She laughingly remembers when the professor acknowledged her first breakthrough by uttering a forceful “Aha!” instead of his usual “um hum” as he looked at her work.

Velma now participates in a self-instructed drawing class at the famous Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. The sessions take place in one of the studios that was used by Matisse and attract students from around the globe. Velma uses charcoal pencils for her work and finds that the exercise of drawing sharpens her eye for the appreciation of quality in drawings and paintings. When she is in class, she completely forgets about the outside world. She plans to eventually try her hand at painting aquarelles.

Académie de la Grande Chaumière
© Discover Paris!
Velma loves the Montparnasse area of Paris above all others, and not only because it has been an artistic center for the city for over a century. The first time that she visited Paris in 1963, she stayed at a little hotel next to what is now the Fondation Cartier on boulevard Raspail and fell in love with the diverse population and the atmosphere of the neighborhood. So it felt natural when she and Pol decided to settle there upon moving to Paris.

She describes the area as teeming with people who were (or would come to be) considered celebrities – people such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Eugène and Rodica Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney – who were simply part of the local crowd. She said it was like being at the theater every day. For the longest time, the American Center in Paris (now the Fondation Cartier) was located down the street from her home, and it drew its own special crowd.

Velma and Pol knew everyone in the neighborhood. They conducted their own research on the history of the Montparnasse Cemetery. Velma was among the crowd at the funerals of Sartre and de Beauvoir at the cemetery, and watched the hearse carrying Josephine Baker’s coffin pass down the street during her funeral procession past the Bobino Theater in 1975. She and Pol enjoyed having lunch with Man and Juliet (whom they called Julie) Ray at the Coupole every Sunday.

Those days have past, but Velma still loves Montparnasse. The one thing that she appreciates less about the neighborhood is that demonstrations inevitably make their way past her building on boulevard Raspail. She has a bird’s-eye view of them from her apartment and notes that sometimes student demonstrations can become violent due to infiltration of the ranks by hoodlums.

Regarding Paris as a whole, Velma says she greatly admires French people (even if they can be difficult) and the atmosphere and pace of life here. She also loves the food! She developed a fondness for raw oysters as an adult and enjoys the fact that there are numerous places where one can buy them on the street (particularly in Montparnasse). She appreciates the fact that the French respect creativity in a person and loves that art expos abound here. She also finds that Paris is a wonderful city for women to live in and finds the French to be less age-conscious and less materialistic than Americans. However, she does not like the propensity of the French to hold strikes, saying that they always seem to occur when it is raining or when she needs to catch a plane.

Fresh oysters
© Discover Paris!
On several different occasions, Velma and Pol spent several months in the U.S. wherever Pol was invited as an artist-in-residence. At the time of his one-man show at UC Berkeley, Velma gave birth to their only child, Michelle, in Berkeley, California. Michelle was therefore an American citizen, but was raised in France from the tender age of two months.

When Velma and Pol moved back to Paris, they educated Michelle at the Ecole Alsacienne (a French school) and then at the Ecole Bilingue (rive gauche) where students from all over the world were enrolled. Pol spoke French to their daughter and Velma spoke English to her. Velma ensured that Michelle was familiar with American culture, holidays, etc., but did not belabor the issue of race and U.S. race relations during Michelle’s childhood. As a result, Michelle was never challenged regarding how she thought of herself racially until she applied to film school in the U.S. Velma described how she advised her daughter to mark herself as “B” (for black), saying that Michelle should not to “stir up trouble” and waste time with the application. She counseled Michelle that she would have the greatest chance of being admitted if she applied to the school as a minority female.

Michelle followed Velma’s advice and was accepted to the school. But when she moved to the U.S., she felt that her white Belgian father had been “erased.”

Michelle is now a professor at Cal State. She has since adjusted to U.S. attitudes about race and is raising her own daughter there.

Velma still visits the U.S. at least twice a year – once to spend time with her daughter and granddaughter on the west coast at Christmas time and at least once to visit her beloved New York. Nowadays, she stays in Montclair, New Jersey and travels into the city because the pace of New York has become a bit too hectic for her compared to that of Paris. She has also begun to visit Washington, D.C. more frequently and likes the nation’s capital more with each visit.

Having lived in Paris for so long, Velma has excellent advice for those who are considering moving to France. She recommends that anyone wanting to come here learn a little bit about the history of the country and the people first, then read a couple of books about contemporary France and French customs so as to gain perspective and orientation on what to expect here. She also recommends visiting at different times of the year to see what the city is like during various seasons. Finally, once established here, she strongly recommends that new residents fight the urge to compare everything in France with what they’ve left back home. She says that anyone who is considering living in Paris must already like many things about before moving here.

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Black Paris Profiles™:Velma Bury – Part 1

Velma Bury, the grande dame of African-American Paris, has lived in the City of Light for over 40 years. A politically-active art aficionado and retired professor, she now runs Les Boules et Les Cubes, the company that handles the estate of her late husband, Pol Bury. Velma has personally witnessed the metamorphosis of the Paris art world, the city’s African-American population, and her beloved Montparnasse. She serves as advisor to Les Amis de Beauford Delaney, the French non-profit association that placed a tombstone on artist Beauford Delaney’s previously unmarked grave in 2010. As president of Les Amis, it is my great pleasure to bring you Velma’s story!

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Velma at her Montparnasse home
© Discover Paris!
Velma left her home in New York and her activities in the civil rights movement to permanently relocate to France in 1968 with her soon-to-be husband, Belgian sculptor Pol Bury. She and Pol booked passage on an Italian ocean liner and sailed to Cannes. Velma recalls that the ship was quite sumptuous and she has vivid memories of the four-day journey.

The day after setting sail, the ship’s passengers and crew learned that Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. The captain called an assembly to announce the news. Being the only African American aboard, Velma inadvertently became the “go to” person for Europeans who wanted to learn more about race relations in the United States. Solely by virtue of her race, she became the ship’s “celebrity” passenger – a veritable cultural ambassador for the U.S.! She found that she would continue to be thrust into this role once she arrived in France.

Upon arriving in Cannes, Velma and Pol went to nearby Saint Paul de Vence, where Pol had been invited to stay at the Fondation Maeght. This was at a time when European artists had a great deal of difficulty getting their works exhibited in the U.S. Velma settled in and began to meet the numerous artists – including Joan Miró and Alexander Calder – who stayed at the foundation. She found that up and coming artists who visited the foundation viewed her not as an African American, but rather as a member of this “art establishment.” Because she had been quite active in the art world in New York prior to having met Pol and because she understood the politics behind the museums and galleries there, she was the logical person to ask about this American “shut-out” of European artists. She found it interesting that merely by crossing the ocean, what had been the predominant aspect of her American identity – her blackness – became virtually insignificant in the face of her perceived place among the power brokers of the art world.

Pol and Velma frequently came up to Paris during the student uprisings of 1968. She recalls watching the student demonstrations on boulevard du Montparnasse from the “safety” of the café La Coupole during her first visit to Paris that year, and then having to flee the establishment through the kitchen when the students ran into the café followed by the police. She wryly observed that while she and Pol were not personally involved with the students, the police would not have taken the time to ask them for their passports had they stayed in their seats at the café!

Vintage images of La Coupole
When Velma and Pol decided to move to Paris permanently, they found a working studio on boulevard Raspail in the heart of Montparnasse that they would come to call home. Velma supervised the renovation of the huge space into an apartment over the following year, and she and Pol lived there until Pol’s death in 2005. Velma still occupies this apartment today. With her consent, the residents of the building paid tribute to Pol and his achievements by gifting a plaque that they placed on the façade of the building in 2008.

Some time after moving to Paris, Pol found a second property in the French countryside that he purchased for use as an atelier for creating his monumental works and fountains. He wanted a place that was isolated so that the noise from the construction of his sculptures would not bother the neighbors and found it in a small hamlet near Giverny. Though they continued to visit the south of France regularly for the next 40 years, they found their permanent home in the Ile-de-France region.

Velma’s interest in art began at a very early age. One of her uncles was a “Sunday painter.” He decorated the family apartment with his own art as well as reproductions of fine art. This influenced her greatly as she grew older and began visiting museums and viewing original pieces. When she became an adult, she found that she increasingly preferred to spend her free time engaging in art-related activities.

Velma’s first husband, Chris Shelton, was an African-American abstract expressionist artist. He held a position at the Sidney Janis Gallery, which was one of the most powerful galleries in New York at the time. It became known for its support of abstract expressionist artists such as de Kooning, Kline, Motherwell, and other American artists specializing in this genre of painting. Velma would meet these artists, develop an eye for abstract expressionist painting, and learn the workings of the white-dominated New York art scene because of Chris’ association with the gallery. She supported his work by organizing shows for him at their apartment. She thoroughly enjoyed the milieu and became quite experienced at mixing with the dominant players of the time.

Some time after separating from Chris, Velma discovered Pol Bury’s art at a show at the Lefebre Gallery in 1964. She fell in love with his playful kinetic sculptures (see video below), but would not meet the artist himself for another two years.


Video from PolBury.com Web site
Their first encounter took place at the opening of Pol’s second show at the Lefebre Gallery in 1966, and Velma fondly remembers that she almost did not attend the opening because she learned about it after she had already gotten ready for bed. Friends of hers convinced her to change into her clothes and come out to the opening, and her life was irrevocably changed because of it. Pol and Velma’s courtship began that evening, and continued across the ocean until Pol was invited into the Gallery Maeght in 1968. He invited her to come with him, and she accepted.

Come back to the Entrée to Black Paris blog next week, when I'll publish Part 2 of Velma's story.

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