A Black Haven: African Americans and the Myth of a Colorblind France

Abstract

For African Americans living in a country that they perceive as overflowing with prejudice, France has come to represent the opportunity and security missing in America. France is seen as a Black Haven, a safe place. Given the chance, many have given up all they know and ventured into the comforting borders of the "City of Light," where they felt that all that was wrong in America would disappear. The most important, or more fittingly, the most renowned of these periods of flight to France occurred during the first half of the twentieth century when America was mired in societal norms that promoted white people over all others. Thus the inter­war and postwar periods are the most important eras for the African American experience in France, more specifically in Paris, the "Black Haven."