La Cima Charter School Tour of Luxembourg Garden - A First for Entrée to Black Paris Tours!

It's great to be back to blogging again!

Since the Beauford Delaney: Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition closed in mid-March, I've been on a mission to "take the show on the road".

Click here to find out how you can help!

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A few weeks ago, Entrée to Black Paris had the immense pleasure of providing our Luxembourg Garden tour to 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds from La Cima Charter School in Brooklyn. It was the first time that ETBP has given a guided walking tour to participants of such a young age!

La Cima Charter School Scholars and Chaperones at the Luxembourg Garden
© Discover Paris!
Executive Director Tara Phillips contacted us to ask whether we could give the La Cima scholars a guided tour that would complement the students' curriculum. Our initial response was that we don't provide tours for students less than 14 years of age.

Director Phillips responded immediately by informing us that La Cima's vision as a school is to "develop scholars who have the intellectual capacity, social capital and the emotional strength of character to be change makers in their communities" and that their curriculum "encourages students to grapple with difficult issues when it comes to being Black in America, both from historical and current perspectives." She told us that the article they were given to read in preparation for the trip was Thomas Chatterton Williams' story in the premier issue of Smithsonian Journeys Quarterly: "Is Paris Still a Haven for Black Americans?"

ETBP's "Black History in and Around the Luxembourg Garden" was the perfect tour for the group. It provided an idyllic setting to discuss many aspects of race relations - past and present - in France and to compare them with race relations in the U.S. Among the topics presented were the Loi Taubira (which declares slavery and the slave trade crimes against humanity); the outstanding political legacy of French Guiana's native son, Gaston Monnerville; and the Paris experiences of African-American artists Loïs Mailou Jones and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Bust of Gaston Monnerville
© Discover Paris!
The students were delightfully attentive and had opportunities to associate topics from the tour with various subjects they were studying at home.

Executive Director Tara Phillips and Monique Y. Wells
© Discover Paris!
Phillips had the following to say about the tour:

We learned about the Entrée to Black Paris tour from the US Embassy. Monique came highly recommended and accommodated us with a well-tailored tour for our group. Our group included 12 5th graders and 7 adult chaperones from a charter school in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

We wanted the tour to be relevant to things our scholars have studied, including the experiences of Black Americans in Paris and other institutions that impact Black people around the globe. The tour met our expectations and we all learned a great deal about France’s role in the slave trade, famous Black American artists and writers who lived in Paris and several Black political leaders in Paris and their impact on government.

Students and chaperones alike enjoyed the tour. It definitely broadened all of our knowledge about the city and there were relevant connections made to our own lives in New York City.

Read Executive Director Phillips' entire testimonial here.

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Cayenne Produces Powerful French Politicians

France's Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira, is nothing less than a fireball on the political scene. Prior to accepting this post in President François Hollande's government, she was a deputy for French Guiana in the National Assembly from 1993 to 2012, a deputy for the European Union from 1994 to 1999, and a candidate for the French presidential election in 2002. She is the author of the law that declares slavery and the slave trade a crime against humanity.

Christiane Taubira
© Discover Paris!
Minister Taubira was born in Cayenne in 1952. She is the latest in a string of strongly influential 20th-century politicians from her homeland.

French Guiana is the largest overseas department of France. Located on the north Atlantic coast of South America, it borders Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west. The country is the home to the primary launch site of the European Space Agency.

Map of French Guiana
Creative Commons License
Long before Madame Taubira was born, her countryman, Gaston Monnerville was on the path to greatness.

Gaston Monnerville
Deputy of French Guiana - 1932
Monnerville was born in Cayenne in 1897. He studied law at the University of Toulouse. He began his political career by serving as Deputy of Guiana from 1932 – 1946 and as Undersecretary of Colonies in the late 1930s. He served in the Resistance during WWII, followed by a long stretch as President of the Council of the Republic from 1946 – 1958. When the Council of the Republic became the French Sénat (Senate) during the Fifth Republic, he served as president of this legislative body from 1958 – 1968. He went on to serve on the Constitutional Council, the highest constitutional authority in France, from 1977-1983.

Monnerville worked diligently to establish equal rights for the citizens of France’s overseas departments and territories. He was instrumental in having the remains of Victor Schoelcher and Félix Eboué transferred to the Pantheon in 1949.

A commemorative bust was installed in his honor across the street from the Luxembourg Garden on 20 December 2011, in the presence of M. Jean-Pierre Bel, president of the Sénat, and M. Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris. He died in Paris in 1991.

Bust of Gaston Monnerville
© Discover Paris!
Félix Eboué (1884-1944), was a contemporary of Monnerville.

Félix Eboué and Charles de Gaulle in Chad
Educated in Bordeaux (high school) and at the Ecole Coloniale in Paris, he served in Oubanqui-Chari (Central African Republic) for twenty years and then in Martinique (Secretary General) and French Sudan (Secretary General and Interim Governor of what is now Mali). He married Eugénie Tell in Guiana in 1922 and became a Freemason. In 1936 he was made interim governor of Guadeloupe, the first Black man to be appointed to such a senior post anywhere in the French colonies.

Two years later, with conflict on the horizon, he was transferred to Chad, arriving in Fort Lamy on 4 January 1939. He was instrumental in developing support for the Free French in all of France’s black African colonies in 1940, an action which earned him the position of governor general of French Equatorial Africa and ultimately gave Charles de Gaulle's faction control of the rest of French Equatorial Africa. He died unexpectedly during a visit to Cairo, Egypt.

His wife, Eugénie Eboué-Tell, was a powerhouse in her own right. Born in Cayenne in 1891, she married Félix Eboué in 1922 and went with him to Oubanqui-Chari, Martinique, Sudan, and Guadeloupe before moving with him to Chad on the eve of WWII. During the war, she was part of the Free French Forces and worked as a nurse in a Brazzaville hospital.

Eugénie Eboué-Tell, Sénatrice
© Discover Paris!
After the war, she served as a deputy (representative) for the island of Guadeloupe from 1945-1946 and then Counselor/Senator for the island from 1946-1952. In 1951, she was Vice-President of the Commission for Overseas France, and on July 10, 1952, after leaving the Palais du Luxembourg, she became vice president of the French Union Assembly. She was always a strong advocate for rights in the overseas departments and territories. In 1958, she was elected municipal councilor of Asnieres, a town on the outskirts of Paris.

Eboué-Tell died in the Paris suburb of Pontoise in 1972.

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Sounds of the Luxembourg Garden at the British Museum

In April 2013, I was honored to have been asked to participate in a very special series of interviews called Paris – A Personal View. Des Coulam, whose passion is to record the sounds of Paris, is the creative genius behind the series. He recorded my observations of the Luxembourg Garden—my favorite place in Paris—as we took a leisurely walk through it.

Des Coulam and Monique Y. Wells
© Discover Paris!

Des fits Monique with a microphone
© Discover Paris!
I took Des to several of my preferred spots in the garden. Among them were the eastern terrace near the boat basin, where I showed Des an image of Loïs Mailou Jones’ 1948 painting of the Luxembourg Palace and the towers of Saint-Sulpice beyond, and the southernmost point of the parterre where I talked about Gaston Monnerville, brilliant legal mind and President of the French Senate. (A bust of Monnerville stands just outside the garden.)

Bust of Gaston Monnerville
© Discover Paris!
We ended at the gate nearest the rear of the Odéon Theater, where crocuses were in bloom.

Several days ago, Des wrote me to inform me that:

...the recording you made of your personal view of the Jardin de Luxembourg has now been ingested into the British Library Sound & Moving Image Archive in London. The catalogue reference is:

027A-C1540X0003XX-0100M0.WAV - Jardin de Luxembourg: A Personal View by Dr. Monique Y. Wells

Whilst the catalogue reference is available to everyone, the recording itself is only available for scientific, educational or other non-commercial purposes upon request to the British Library. The British Library only provide a listening service so the recording will not be made available for download.

So now your voice and your wonderful exposition of the Jardin de Luxembourg will be available for future generations to explore, to study and to enjoy. Bravo!

For those of you who are so inclined, I hope that you'll ask to listen to the audio when you visit the British Library. For those who'd like to enjoy the audio tour (and the beautiful photos that accompany it) from the comfort of your own home, click here!

Finally, I encourage all of you - whether residents or visitors - to take time to listen to the city at Des' Soundlandscapes' blog. You'll discover Paris from a fascinating new perspective!

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Angela Davis in Paris

Angela Davis first came to Paris in 1962 during the summer prior to her sophomore year at Brandeis University. She and a friend sublet a chambre de bonne (maid's quarters) on the top floor of a building that she describes as being so close to the Eiffel Tower that "you could see the elevator rising and falling" from the tiny window of the room. On July 5th of that year, she was present at a demonstration held at Place de la Sorbonne in celebration of Algeria’s newly-won independence. She reported that the French police broke up the gathering with high power water hoses, saying that "they were as vicious as the redneck cops in Birmingham who met the Freedom Riders with their dogs and hoses."

Angela Davis during her junior year at Brandeis in the 1960s
Image from Amazon.com
For her junior year abroad in 1963-64, Davis returned to Paris and lived with a family in a building in the 16th arrondissement, very near the Arc de Triomphe. Her program was organized by Hamilton College and housed at Reid Hall, but she took classes at the Sorbonne because of her advanced level of French. In her autobiography, she remarks that she always felt as though she was in church when she was at the Sorbonne. She frequented the Théâtre de la Huchette on rue de la Huchette as part of her theater course - the only one that was organized by Hamilton.

Years later, after her prison ordeal, Davis returned to Paris. On May 16, 1975, Bernard Pivot interviewed her, Gaston Monnerville, and two other writers for his televised literary talk show, Apostrophes. (The French translation of Davis' autobiography had recently been published and Monnerville's biography had just been published as well.)

Angela Davis and Bernard Pivot on Apostrophes
Screenshot from Ina.fr video

Angela Davis on Apostrophes
Screenshot from Ina.fr video
Davis and Monnerville held opposite views on racism, which they discussed on camera before a studio audience. Click here to view the first seven minutes of the broadcast (in French).

Gaston Monnerville on Apostrophes
Screenshot from Ina.fr video
The encounter is described in Alice Kaplan's book Dreaming in French. Kaplan says that as Monnerville "talked about the universal values of the French Republic, Angela Davis looked at him with an absolute interest and curiosity, with respect."

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