Triumph Of Melanin: Alexandre Dumas

  Alexandre Dumas was a famous French writer. Born July 24, 1802, Dumas was the grandson of a French nobleman and Afro-Caribbean slave woman. His father was brought to France by his grandfather and was educated in a military school, eventually joining the army. At the age of 31 he was promoted to general, becoming the first Afro-Antilles to reach that rank in the French army. Alexandre Dumas’ father passed when Dumas was a young boy, but it was the tales of his father’s strength and bravery that inspired him to write the novels he is so well known for today - The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo, being his two most popular. Dumas wrote a wide variety of publications, totaling over 100,000 pages of literature. Despite all of his personal success and aristocratic background, Alexandre Dumas dealt with much discrimination given his mixed-race ancestry. In 1843 he wrote a short novel, Georges, which addressed some of the issues and effects of race and colonialism.