Paul Trevigne

Paul Trévigne (1825 – September 1, 1908) was an American newspaperman and civil rights activist in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was editor of two black-owned newspapers, L'Union from 1862 until it closed in 1864, and then the New Orleans Tribune (1864-1870), the first black daily newspaper in the country. Both papers were bilingual, published in French and English.

He continued to work on civil rights issues, seeking equal rights for those who had been free people of color before the war, as well as the many freedmen emancipated by the war. He opposed efforts by white Democrats to impose segregation.

Early life and education Paul Trévigne was born in 1825, biracial son of a veteran of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.

They hired Trévigne as editor of L'Union, which strongly promoted the Unionist Republican cause in Louisiana. It also promoted the cause of emancipation and the franchise for all enslaved African Americans in the state, where blacks made up half the population, and across the South.

During the latter part of Reconstruction, Trévigne wrote Centennial History of the Louisiana Negro, which was published in the Louisianian in 1875-1876 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the American Revolution. One of the first state histories about blacks to be published in the United States, it "highlighted the scientific, literary, and artistic contributions of African Americans in Louisiana".