50 Facts About Paulette Nardal

Paulette Nardal was a French writer from Martinique, a journalist, and one of the drivers of the development of black literary consciousness.

Paulette Nardal was one of the authors involved in the creation of the Negritude genre and introduced French intellectuals to the works of members of the Harlem Renaissance through her translations.

Paulette Nardal was the first black person to study at the Sorbonne in 1920 and with her sisters established an influential literary salon, Le Salon de Clamart, which explored the experiences of the African diaspora.

At the beginning of World War II, Paulette Nardal fled France but was injured when a submarine attacked her ship, causing a lifelong disability.

Paulette Nardal sponsored home economic training and founded nursery schools for impoverished women.

Paulette Nardal was the first black woman to hold an official post in the Division of Non-Self-Governing Territories at the UN.

Paulette Nardal wrote a history of traditional music styles for the centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery on the island and developed a choir that celebrated the African roots of the music of Martinique.

Paulette Nardal worked in the Division of Non-Self Governing Territories.

Paulette Nardal returned to Martinique in 1948, and in the 1950s and 1960s, she supported Dr Martin Luther King's campaign for civil rights in the United States.

Paulette Nardal was born on 12 October 1896 in Le Francois, Martinique, to Louise and Paul Nardal.

Paulette Nardal's father was a construction engineer, who had been trained in France and her mother was a piano teacher.

Paulette Nardal was the eldest of seven sisters in the family, which was a part of the island's small upper-middle-class black community.

Paulette Nardal attended school at the Colonial College for Girls and studied English in the West Indies.

At the age of 24, Paulette Nardal enrolled at the Sorbonne to study English, the first black person to attend the university.

Paulette Nardal quickly became involved in the artistic circle of the French intelligentsia, coming under the influence of the Harlem Renaissance writers.

Paulette Nardal's writing included literary works, critiques, journalism, discourses on colonialism, and a tourist guide called Guide des Colonies Francaises that was commissioned by the governments of the islands of the French Antilles.

Paulette Nardal's roles included contributing to the journal, serving as editor and translator, as well as moving the journal toward a more Pan-African audience.

Paulette Nardal was actively involved in the demonstrations that followed the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and went to Senegal in 1937 to try to rally others to the cause against the invasion.

Paulette Nardal was active with feminist organizations including Ad Lucem Per Caritatem and the Union Feminine Civique et Sociale throughout the 1930s.

When forced to flee France in 1939 because of World War II, Paulette Nardal boarded a ship flying under protection of the Red Cross.

Paulette Nardal settled in Fort-de-France and initially worked as an English teacher for dissidents wanting to support General de Gaulle.

In 1944 Paulette Nardal founded Le Rassemblement feminin to encourage women to take part in the 1945 election and in 1945, she founded a journal, La Femme dans la Cite, where she stressed the importance of women's involvement in politics and social work.

In 1946, Paulette Nardal was nominated to serve as a delegate to the United Nations.

Paulette Nardal arrived in New York City, where she served as an area specialist.

Paulette Nardal was the first black woman to hold an official post in the Division of Non-Self-Governing Territories, serving for 18 months.

Paulette Nardal later founded a choir to promote and preserve African-rooted traditional music including folk songs, spirituals, classical and South American songs.

Paulette Nardal continued to publish La Femme dans la Cite until 1951.

Paulette Nardal sought to offer perspective on what it was like to live in Paris as a black person from Martinique.

Paulette Nardal's published writings from this period include "En Exile" and "Une femme sculpteur noir".

Paulette Nardal wrote significantly about her consciousness of race and black solidarity, as well as the double standard of marginalizing women.

Paulette Nardal founded two journals during her career, La Revue du Monde Noir and La Femme dans la Cite.

Paulette Nardal founded La Femme dans la Cite to coax middle-class readers into making the connection between improving the mind through industry and awakening their social consciousness.

The journal was the only newspaper in the area and Paulette Nardal used it to try to get women out to vote in the 1945 elections.

The communists won a majority of seats and, the following year, Paulette Nardal wrote several editorials stressing to women the importance of gaining an understanding of world issues and voting.

Paulette Nardal's politics were conservative right center and while she supported women's equality, she was not militant.

Paulette Nardal was aware of inequality and wanted women to educate themselves to improve their situation, but she was not in favor of overthrowing existing regimes.

Paulette Nardal explained in her essays that women's political and social action was the key to social improvement and that through taking part in politics, women could combat the patriarchy.

Paulette Nardal implemented nursery schools to educate the children of working mothers.

Paulette Nardal worked towards suffrage and, when women gained the right to vote in 1944, urged women to take up the political mantle and work towards resolving social problems.

Le Rassemblement feminin was not an organization that supported any particular political party and in her first essay for the journal La Femme dans la Cite, Paulette Nardal emphasized that the organization's goals could apply to any political party as Le Rassemblement feminin was only meant to encourage women to become more socially and politically involved.

Paulette Nardal felt that the negativity l'Union des femmes de la Martinique directed towards upper-class white women promoted racial hate, while Le Rassemblement feminin encouraged women of all backgrounds to uplift one another through solidarity.

Paulette Nardal believed that it was important for women to engage in both local and international politics and social work and she felt that the failure to inform students of global issues was a fundamental flaw in French curriculum.

Paulette Nardal felt that the United Nations was an important establishment that schools could use to teach international issues.

From 1946 to 1948 Paulette Nardal acted as a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Paulette Nardal was Catholic and her Christian values were often reflected in her feminist beliefs.

Paulette Nardal believed that women's difference from men was due to their feminine essence that was given to them by God.

Paulette Nardal felt that women's natural peaceful and calming nature would make them important guiding figures in social and political matters.

Paulette Nardal's Catholicism is present in the essays she wrote for La Femme dans la Cite.

Paulette Nardal presented both as non-denominational and maintained that these organizations accepted people from non-Catholic religions and non-believers.

At the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony Paulette Nardal was celebrated as one of the ten "Heroines of French History".