Victor Séjour

Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand (June 2, 1817 – September 20, 1874) was an American writer. Born in New Orleans, he spent most of his career in Paris. Séjour's fiction and plays were written and published in French. Although he was mostly unknown to later American writers of the nineteenth century, his short story "Le Mulâtre" ("The Mulatto") is the earliest known work of fiction by a Black American author. In France, however, he was known chiefly for his plays. His first work of fiction was an ode to French Emperor Napoleon in 1841.

Biography Juan Victor Séjour was born on June 2, 1817, in New Orleans to François Marcou, a Creole of color from Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti), and Eloisa Philippe Ferrand, a New Orleans-born quadroon. His parents were wealthy and had him educated in a private school. There were no public schools for people of color in New Orleans, and the society as a whole was segregated. Free people of color, however, especially if they had some economic status, had more legal rights than did enslaved African Americans in Louisiana.

At the age of nineteen, Séjour moved to Paris to continue his education and find work. Other free people of color from the US, whose families were wealthy enough, also studied in Paris. There he met members of the Parisian literary elite, including Cyrille Bissette, publisher of the black-owned journal La Revue des Colonies.

Personal life Séjour was reared as Catholic like his parents and learned French as his first language.