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Born in N.O., Victor Séjour considered first African American fiction writer [1]
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Date: 2025-06-30
Victor Séjour, the earliest known author of fiction by an African American person. Credit: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
A short story of racial injustice and revenge led to the remarkable career of a New Orleans-born playwright who found success in Paris.
Victor Séjour, according to Kreol Magazine, is considered to be the first African American person to write fiction. He was 20 years old when he wrote the short story, “Le Mulâtre” (“The Mulatto”).
Set in Saint-Domingue, known today as Haiti, the story follows Georges, an enslaved man whose wife was hanged because she rejected Georges’ master. Seeking revenge, Georges killed his master, whose dying words revealed that Georges was actually his son.
The story’s “slavery theme was the first and only time that Séjour covered this topic,” the magazine states. “In fact, he moved away from writing fiction completely to become a playwright.”
Born in 1817, Séjour moved to France when he was 17. His first dramatic play “Diégarias,” was produced in 1844 in France and later in New Orleans. According to 64 Parishes, the play, written in verse, was set in the 15th century and explored “identity and prejudice through the tragic fate of a Jewish advisor to a Catholic monarch.”
Sejour “soon found prose to be a better vehicle for conveying his messages,” Black Past states. Over three decades, his “themes included fidelity, familial and romantic love, the dignity of labor, the existence of God, and the value of courage in adversity,”
His plays include “Richard III” (1852), “Le Fils de la Nuit” (1856), “Le Martyre du cœur” (1858), “La Tireuse de cartes” (1859) and “Les Massacres de la Syrie” (1860).
“By the mid-1860s, Séjour’s star began to wane as literary tastes shifted from Romantic idealism to the grittier visions of Realism and Naturalism,” 64 Parishes states. “He continued to write until his death.”
Séjour was 57 when he died from tuberculosis in 1874 in Paris.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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