Félix Éboué
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- "Eboue" redirects here, for the Arsenal F.C. player see Emmanuel Eboue.
Félix Adolphe Éboué (December 26, 1884 - March 17, 1944) was a Black French (French Guianan-born) colonial administrator and Free French leader.
[edit] Biography
Born in Cayenne, the grandson of slaves, he was the fourth of a family of five brothers. His father, Yves Urbain Éboué, was an orator and his mother, Marie Josephine Aurélie Leveillé, was a shop owner born in Roura. She raised her sons in the guiana creole tradition. Éboué was a brilliant scholar who won a scholarship to study at secondary school in Bordeaux. Éboué 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 École coloniale in Paris, he served in Oubangui-Chari for twenty years and then in Martinique. In 1936 he was made governor of Guadeloupe, the first Black man to be appointed to such a senior post anywhere in the French colonies.
Two years later, with conflict on the horizon, he was transferred to Chad, arriving in Fort Lamy on January 4, 1939. He was instrumental in developing Chadian support for the Free French in 1940, an action which ultimately gave Charles de Gaulle's faction control of the rest of French Equatorial Africa. As governor of the whole area during 1940-1944, Éboué acted to improve the status of Africans, classifying 200 educated Africans as notable évolué and reducing their taxes, as well as placing 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 November 8, 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 honouring his memory. An 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, the first Black man to be so honoured.
Place Félix-Éboué is in 12th arrondissement of Paris as is Paris Métro station Daumesnil (Paris Métro) which also honours Félix Éboué.
