Will a new monument to those enslaved by France heal or divide?
As the color faded from the sky, a group gathered in front of the white-stone Basilica of St. Denis, where dozens of French kings are buried, to pay tribute to their ancestors.
Not to King Louis XIII, who authorized the slave trade in 1642, or to his son, the Sun King, who introduced the slavery code; both remains are buried in the Gothic building. They came for the victims, who are honored outside with a modest memorial.
“This is Jean-Pierre Calodat,” said Josée Grard, 81, as she ran her fingers along the name written on the bulbous sculpture as tambour drums echoed around her. “He was released four years before the abolition. His wife, Marie Lette, must be nearby.'
There are only four such memorials in all of France. Last fall, the government announced it would do more: build a “National Memorial to the Victims of Slavery” in the Trocadéro Gardens, the Instagram-favorite tourist destination for its clear view of the Eiffel Tower.
But the monument, intended as a gesture of reconciliation in a country reluctant to address the unsavory parts of its past, has itself become a source of division.
It will bear the names of approximately 224,000 people who were freed from slavery by France in 1848, made citizens and assigned a family name.
While some see it as a hopeful sign of progress, others have dismissed it as contradictory lip service. Specifically, they say, by listing the names of people freed, the monument will once again glorify France for abolishing slavery, not for atoning for the fact that some four million people over two centuries have been held in slavery.
The group that has been lobbying for the monument for decades, which also includes Parisians who grew up in Guadeloupe and Martinique, hopes it will offer something more intimate.
“This is not a memorial for political confrontation, but one to give people peace,” said Serge Romana, a doctor who was named co-director of the monument along with a cabinet minister. “If the state honors these people, you don't have to be ashamed.”
In a country where national history is so important that the president has a special memorial advisor, the history of slavery — and its lingering effects — remains largely taboo. The capital is full of historic statues and plaques, but only a handful of people are speaking out about the issue. None of the more than 130 museums in Paris are entirely devoted to slavery or the history of colonialism.
President Emmanuel Macron promised to change that and 'face our past'. He has taken some steps, such as officially established the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery in 2018 and last year a tribute to Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture in the French prison where he died.
The acute sensitivity among French leaders underlines a contradiction at the heart of national identity: how could the country that bills itself as a revolutionary champion of universal human rights enslave millions of people at the same time?
“The challenge is to integrate the complexities and contradictions of a society into a common story,” explains Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former prime minister who heads the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery. “Our goal is not to pit communities against each other or create a war of personal histories. It's about building a shared history.”
His foundation often does this by spotlighting French fighters against slavery over those who profited from and perpetuated it.
The committee that pushed for the monument was born in protest against exactly that kind of national reframing. On the 150th anniversary of France's abolition of slavery in 1998, the government announced national celebrations with the slogan: “All born in 1848.”
“We said no – our people were created in slavery,” said Emmanuel Gordien, 65, another doctor and former independence activist from Guadeloupe. “We didn't want to erase history.”
Together with Mr Romana and other Guadeloupean activists, he called for a funeral march through the streets of Paris to pay tribute to ancestors who had been enslaved. Tens of thousands came.
The group later formed an association named after that protest – the May 23, 1998 Committee – to search for that history. They spent years digging in various French archives.
Mr. Gordien grew up learning that his great-great-grandfather Bouirqui was born in West Africa, sold into slavery and named George, and that his family owned land in Guadeloupe that had been part of the former slave plantation.
“That kind of knowledge was lost through shame,” Mr. Gordien said, “and also through French assimilation.”
For most others, their personal connection to this history remained vague. Enslaved people in the French colonies were typically referred to only by their first names, making in-depth genealogical research very difficult.
But the group discovered that in the wake of abolition, the French government had ordered its administrators to give every new citizen a surname so that men could at least vote. The names, the guideline states, must not be those of former masters, must be inspired by ancient history and the calendar, and must vary infinitely.
“If you had an officer who was interested in fruit, you would have a fruit name. If he liked rocks, you got rocks or sand,” said Mr. Gordien, whose ancestor was named Roman emperors.
The names were recorded in registers, which often included personal details: the names of the enslaved person's parents, the type of work they performed, their village or former plantation, and where they were born.
Volunteers collected more than 160,000 records from Guadeloupe and Martinique and compiled all the information into two books and a searchable online registry. Those names will be combined with others found by historians and activists in other former French colonies — now overseas departments — where slavery was enforced.
Since then, the group has been organizing weekly genealogy and research sessions from its small office in the 20th arrondissement of Paris to help people track down their own family stories. In some cases, their searches have turned up pre-abolition documents – old notarial deeds for the sale of enslaved people, which they have been able to verify were the ancient relatives of community members. Their research often provokes strong reactions.
'One woman fell to the ground, as if she had had a stroke. Another person left straight away – she didn't want to know,” said Ms Grard, who, after finding her own ancestors, spent years volunteering with the group to help others do the same. “It's a huge shock.”
But for others, the research leads to a deeper understanding of their past, themselves and how they fit into the bigger story of France. “This is my family,” Ms. Grard said as she hung a paper lantern on the monument with the names of her ancestors. “They are a part of me.”
The monument will provide both respect for their ancestors and healing for their living descendants, the group's members say.
“We have to be at peace with this history and our relationship with this history,” Mr. Romana said. “It's a way forward.”
Names on memorials are important, says Sarah Gensburger, president of the International Association for Memory Studies and a sociologist and historian at Sciences Po University in Paris.
“It gives families a place to grieve if they don't have graves,” she said. “It's also a way to write yourself into the full story.”
However, critics question the decision to honor only 224,000 people and not the millions who suffered under French slavery.
“They want to pay tribute to people who were enslaved, but they put the names of people who were freed by the Republic,” said Myriam Cottias, director of the International Research Center on Slavery and Post-Slavery in Paris. “That's why they managed to get this monument – it glorifies the Republic.”
Lilian Thuram, a former French football star and anti-racism educator, supports the idea of a memorial, but not with names assigned by the same French state that enslaved them.
“Why not mark in marble all the names of the former slave owners and the people who enriched themselves through slavery?” he said.