As the color drained from the sky, a group gathered before the white-stoned basilica of St. Denis, where dozens of French kings are buried, to pay homage to their ancestors, reports The New York Times.
Not to King Louis XIII, who formerly authorized the slave trade in 1642, or his son, the Sun King, who introduced slavery’s legal code, both of whose remains are buried inside the gothic building. They came for the victims, who are honored by a modest memorial outside.
“This is Jean-Pierre Calodat,” said Josée Grard, 81, running her fingers along the name written on the globe-shaped sculpture as tambour drums echoed around her. “He was freed four years before abolition. His wife, Marie Lette, must be nearby.”
There are just four memorials like this around France. Last autumn, the government announced it would do more: build a “National Memorial for the Victims of Slavery” in Trocadéro Gardens, the tourist destination that is an Instagram favorite because of its clear view of the Eiffel Tower.
But the monument, intended as a gesture of reconciliation in a country that has been loath to address the unsavory parts of its past, has itself become a source of division.
It will bear the names of some 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 who were freed, the memorial will again glorify France for abolishing slavery, not atone for holding some four million people in bondage over two centuries.
The group that has lobbied for the memorial for decades, which 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 the co-director of the memorial together with a government cabinet minister. “To have the state honor these people, is to not be ashamed.”
In a country where national history is so important that the president has a special memorial adviser, the history of slavery — and its lingering effects — remains largely taboo. The capital is crowded with historical statues and commemorative plaques, yet only a handful speak to the issue. Not one of Paris’s more than 130 museums is dedicated entirely to slavery, or to the history of colonialism.