Blaise Diagne — first Black African deputy

1914–1931 · Dakar

In 1914, Blaise Diagne — a native of Gorée — was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies in Paris. He was the first Black African to sit in that parliament. In 1916, he secured a law granting full French citizenship to the inhabitants of Senegal's four great towns. In 1918, he led a recruitment mission in Africa that raised more than 63,000 soldiers for France during the First World War.

Sources

• Cambridge — Ascendancy of Blaise Diagne
• Nofi — l'enrôlement forcé des tirailleurs
• Persée — Marc Michel, « La genèse du recrutement de 1918 en Afrique noire française » (Outre-Mers, 1971)

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