UCD - CAM/CLAS Labs

👏🏿
👉🏾 https://bit.ly/Imagesyouwontseeontv

Alexander Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers

Dumas was born in Villes-Cotterêts. His grandfather was a French nobleman, who had settled in Santo Domingo (now part of Haiti); his paternal grandmother, Marie-Cessette, was an Afro-Caribbean, who had been a black slave in the French colony (now part of Haiti).

Dumas did not generally define himself as a black man and there is not much evidence that he encountered overt racism during his life.

However, his works were popular among the 19th-century African-Americans, partly because in The Count of Monte Cristo, the falsely imprisoned Edmond Dantès, may be read as a parable of emancipation .

Source: The Freeman Institute Black History Collection. Check out the complete set