| Paris Noir |
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Paris, the City of Lights, has historically been a haven for
African-Americans seeking relief from the racism of America. This does not
mean, however, that France is without racism. While the French people
embraced African-American soldiers in both W.W.I and W.W.II, the French
government, it is asserted, used their black African soldiers for canon
fodder in the First World War.
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The French still bristle over the loss of
their North African colonies during the Civil War, and Arabs, black and
white, are the targets of a virulent kind of racism throughout France.
Most French, when asked, will tell you that's it's about culture, not color.
And if you embrace both the culture and the language, you're French.
African-American blacks still get the nod. At worst they are
treated like most white Americans; at best like some much-beloved
movie icon from a bygone era.
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For myself, since I wear a hat and evoke some
of the sartorial affectations associated with jazz musicians of old, I'm constantly being asked, "Jazz man?" The French have an unabashed affection for
jazz and all who make it.
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African-Americans are still coming, albeit for different reasons. Artists,
writers, musicians, yes, but also doctors, lawyers and employees of
multinational companies. The old haunts of Wright, Baldwin, Hines and
cartoonist Ollie Harrington are stops on one of the many black
tours of Paris. Their memory is preserved not by acolytes, but academics and
black tour guides.
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Michel Fabre, a noted expert on Richard Wright and the former head of the
Black Studies Program at the Sorbonne, and new faces like Professor Janis
Mayes of Syracuse University, and Professor Marcus C. Bruce of Bates College
in Lewiston, Maine
are just a few of the keepers of the eternal flames with their scholarship.
Mayes teaches a 5-week summer class on Black Paris offered through Syracuse
University.
The class meets at the popular Cafe de Flore on Saint Michel, either upstairs
or at the sidewalk tables on the boulevard. Guest lecturers run the gamut,
from writers and scholars like Julia Wright (the youngest daughter of
Richard) and poet James Emanuel, to diplomats, translators and jazz musicians.
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Jazz is the metaphor for the class taught by professor Mayes. Students are
exposed to a variety of themes, all anchored by and filtered through the
black experience in Paris: African, African-American and Caribbean. Art,
music, politics and food are just a few of the subjects
students can take and run with. It's a flight of fancy within an academic
model. It works. Students come away with an understanding of how French
culture has been and is still being shaped and influenced by the black presence.
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Academics like Mayes are reaching out to the African community, forging links
where they were once weak or nonexistent. Her class starts in the Louvre and
ends over a plate of Jassa Poulet at one of the
many African restaurants in Paris.
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Bo Jangles and Percy's are two newer African-American restaurants in the
city. They have eclipsed Haynes, the eatery started by the former GI who
settled in Paris to explore art and film, and ended up serving up his own
creations of ham hocks and collard greens. His restaurant was the favorite
spot for Wright, his friends and a host of other black luminaries who
followed.
Paris Noir is neither confined to the suburbs nor the few spots in a guide book.
There is enough Paris to go around, A haven? Hardly. A beacon? Always!
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