Blaise Diagne

Blaise Diagne is the first Député African elected official with the French National Assembly . He is also black the Prime Minister for the colonies.

Born from a father Sérère, cook and sailor, and of a mother Manjaque originating in Guinea-Bissau, Gaiaye Me Baye Diagne is very early adopted by the Crespin family which gives him the first name of Blaise.

Married in 1909 with Marie Odette Unpleasant, met in Madagascar, it had four children.

Biography

Formation

He very early learns how to read, write and profits from a solid education who is based on undeniable intellectual qualities. He thus appears in the prize list of the prize giving of the public school of Saint-Louis in August 1884.

Stock-broker of the government, the Diagne young person will continue his studies in France with Aix-en-Provence. Patient, it returns to Saint ‑ Louis to follow the courses of the secondary school Duval where he will be major of his promotion in 1890.

He successfully undertakes the assistance of customs officer in 1891.

Career

In the other colonies

Entered this administration in 1892, it is initially named with the Dahomey (current Bénin) in 1892, then with the French Congo in 1897, with the Meeting in 1898 and finally with Madagascar in 1902, last station where its advanced opinions displease with Gallieni.

Sent in Guyana in 1910, its bonds with the governor are facilitated by his membership of the Grand the East of France.

In metropolis

Blaise Diagne is elected in 1914 appointed of Senegal . Profiting from the statute of the “four old” communes (Rufisque, Gorée, Saint-Louis and Dakar), it is the first African of the French history to sit at the palate Bourbon . Member of the group radical republican Union and radical-Socialist animated by Maurice Violet, freemason him also, it is re-elected without interruption until his death, in spite of systematically hostile campaigns of his adversaries colonialists, which do not like to see a Black with the Parliament, the more so as this one is also the mayor of Dakar.

Blaise Diagne adheres to the French Section of the International worker (SFIO) in December 1917, but no document was found on the date of its departure of the party, probably shortly after its arrival.

It rejoins then the Parti republican-Socialist then the independent ones of Georges Mandel.

In AOF

It becomes in 1917 general police chief with the black troops with row of under-secretary of State to the colonies . It successfully carries out missions in AOF to organize military recruitment in this period of war. Besides it will find this function of 1931 to 1932, in the first government of Pierre Laval.

Diagne benefitted from the special conditions of the conflict to tear off at the Parliament the law of September 29th, 1916 which definitively recognized the French citizenship with originating in the “four communes” and, notable thing, without subjecting them to the Civil code and making them lose their personal status .

Freemasonry

In September 1899, in Saint-Denis, Diagne became Franc-maçon.

It is the first black to be sat, since 1922, with the Council about the Great East of France.

It profits from this sponsorship until its death in 1934, while being largely supported by the parliamentary mediums to which it renvoit, by effect of mirror, the image of perfect comparable. On the other hand, the Senegalese nationalists (especially Communists of UIC as Rolls Senghor) take it for target.

The membership of Diagne to the Franc-Maçonnerie undoubtedly explains that it was buried before the entry of the Moslem cemetery of Soumbedioune in Dakar, the Moslems having refused why a freemason can rest inside the cemetery.

Posterity

The memory of the black Prime Minister of the French Republic remains long-lived. Its name is carried by several places like the Avenue Blaise Diagne , one of largest of Dakar, the college Blaise Diagne of Dakar and, recently, President Abdoulaye Wade gave to the new international airport in construction to forty kilometers of Dakar the name of International airport Blaise Diagne.

Legacy

Whereas the Africa was still mainly colonized, Blaise Diagne defended the participation of the Africans in the policy of the colonizing country.

He asked also an equitable treatment of the ethnic minorities within the French Army.

He took during all his career an action in favor of colonized of Africa and the Antilles to help them to fit in the French company.

At the assembly, Blaise Diagne, protests against the “massacre” of his compatriots at the time of the First World War.

Notes and references of the article

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