Félix Éboué

Categories: French people stubs | 1884 births | 1944 deaths

Félix Adolphe Éboué (26 December 1884 - 17 March 1944) was a black French (French Guianan-born) colonial administrator and Free French leader.

Born in Cayenne, a descendent of slaves, he was a brilliant scholar who won a scholarship to study at secondary school in Bordeaux (France). He was also a keen footballer, captaining his school team when they travelled to games in both Belgium and England.

After graduating in law from the Colonial School in Paris, he served in Ubangi-Shari for twenty years and then in Martinique. In 1936 he was made governor of Guadaloupe, the first black man to be appointed to such a senior post anywhere in the French colonies.

Two years late, with conflict on the horizon, he was transferred to Chad, arriving in Fort Lamy on 4 January 1939. He was instrumental in developing Chadian support for the Free French in 1940, an action which ultimately gave de Gaulle's faction control of the rest of French Equatorial Africa. As governor of the whole area during 1940-1944, he acted to improve the status of Africans, classifying 200 educated Africans as notable évolué and reducing their taxes, placed some Gabonese civil servants into positions of authority.

He also took an interest in the careers of individuals who would later become significant in their own right, including Jean-Hilaire Aubaume and Jean-Rémy Ayouné.

Although a Francophile who promoted the French language in Africa, his circular La nouvelle politique indigène ("New Native Policy"), put out 8 November 1941, advocated the preservation of traditional African institutions.

He died of a heart attack while in Cairo; after his death, the French colonies in Africa brought out a joint stamp issue honoring his memory.

A Officer of the Legion of Honour, decorated in 1941 with the Cross of the Liberation, and a member of the Council of the Order of the Liberation, his ashes are in the Panthéon, Paris, the first black man to be so honoured.

fr:Félix Éboué