Gaston Monnerville

Who is Gaston Monnerville?

Gaston Monnerville was born on 2 January 1897 in Cayenne, French Guiana, the grandson of a formerly enslaved man. He left for mainland France to study law at the University of Toulouse, earning his doctorate before beginning a legal and political career in Paris. Elected a deputy for French Guiana to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1932, he also served as Mayor of Cayenne from 1935. During the Second World War, Monnerville supported the Resistance and remained active in Free French political circles. After the Liberation, he rose to become President of the Council of the Republic in 1947, a post he held until the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, when he became the first President of the French Senate, a position he held until 1968. In this role he presided over the 1949 ceremony marking the centenary of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. Monnerville was the first Black person to preside over a national parliamentary body in French history, and he remained a prominent voice in French public life until his death in 1991.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Gaston Monnerville" · Sénat (French Senate), official archive biographies of past Presidents of the Senate