Black History Fact of the Week: Alexandre Dumas
French playwright and historian
On July 24, 1802, the French playwright and historian Alexandre Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterets in the department of Aisne, in Picardy, France.
He was of mixed heritage. His grandfather was Marquis Alexandre-Antonie Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman and general in the artillery in what is now known as Haiti. His grandmother, Marie-Cesette Dumas, was a formerly enslaved Black woman. She died shortly after the birth of their son, the father of Alexandre, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.
Thomas, a celebrated mulatto general, married Marie-Louise Elisabeth Labouret in 1802.
Together they produced Alexandre. But Thomas died in 1806, leaving his widow to raise their son without an education and poor.
Although Marie-Louise was unable to provide a formal education, she enriched her son with stories of her father’s military deeds in the prosperous years of Napoleon. Many believed Alexandre’s vivid imagination transformed those stories into literary classics.
In his younger years, Alexandre worked as a notary’s clerk, and at age 20, he left for Paris. He had exceptional handwriting, so he secured a position at the Palais Royal in the office of the Duc d’Orleans, who would later become King Louis-Philippe.
However, the young man started his writing career unsuccessfully, but after maturing in his craft, he became a master storyteller.
In 1824, he fathered Alexandre Dumas fils, whose mother was Catherine Labay.
A few years later, the author had his first success with his romantic-historical play, “Henri III and His Court,” which spurred a very successful career.
Throughout his career, the author produced classics like “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “The Nutcracker,” “ The Three Musketeers,” and others.
On Dec. 5, 1870, Alexandre died of a stroke.
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On Sept. 13, 1886, world renowned writer and philosopher, Alain LeRoy Locke was born in Philadelphia, Pa., to math teacher and activist, Pliny Ishmael Locke and educator Mary Hawkins Locke.
He was a sickly child with rheumatic fever, but coped by reading a great deal and learning to play the piano and violin. The sickness damaged his heart for life.
On Aug. 27, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was beaten and shot to death by two White men who threw his mutilated body into the Tallahatchie River attached to a 70-pound weight.
Earlier that summer, Till’s mother Mamie Till had sent the young Chicagoan to the South to visit relatives. Before he left her sight, she gave her son a stern warning, saying, “Be careful. If you have to get down on your knees and bow when a White person goes past, do it willingly.”
On Aug. 17, 1887, Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, to Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr., a mason, and Sarah Jane Richards, a domestic worker. The youngest of 11 children, Garvey, along with his sister Indiana, were the only two to survive to maturity.
Naturally apt to revolutionary thought and action, in his young adult years he became a trade unionist, and in 1907 was elected vice president of the compositors’ branch of the printers’ union.
On Aug. 5, 1946, in Washington, D.C., physicist Shirley Jackson was born to Beatrice and George Jackson. Adamant about education, the Jacksons instilled a strong sense of appreciation for learning and inspired their daughter to pursue science.
On July 12, 1787, the United States Congress passed the Three-fifths Compromise, which mandated that each enslaved African would be counted as three-fifths of a person for representation and taxation purposes.
Before the compromise was passed, southerners wanted Congress to count enslaved Africans in order to have more representation, but did not want them to be counted for taxation. And it was just the opposite desire for the northerners.
