Afro-Brazilian and African American Migrant Connections in the City of Lights in the Post-World War II Era

Post war Paris beckoned migrants from around the globe. Scholars have long documented the history of African American intellectuals and expatriates in Paris both before and after the war. Less is known about Afro-Brazilian migrants and their collaborations and interactions with other people of African-descent. This paper looks at key Afro-Brazilian migrants who lived, performed and collaborated with other black migrant performers, often withthe help of French interlocutors. French demand and consumption of black entertainment intersected with African American and Afro-Brazilian desire to promote their cultures abroad. While both US and Brazilian blacks often occupied privileged spaces vis a vis blacks from French colonies, they nonetheless catered to an evolving and often exotic and racialized French gaze that reaffirmed France’s cultural and political relevance in a new geopolitical reality.