‘Paris Here I Come!’: The Story of a 1950’s Guide for Black Travelers

My favorite Paris guide is not from Lonely Planet, Wallpaper or Monocle. In fact, I’m sure you’ve never heard of that. Titled “Paris here, I come!” And published by the African -American company in 1953, it is an intelligent volume, only 30 pages located inside a cheerful yellow cover with a white line drawing of the Eiffel Tower.

Full of charming and conversational advice, the brochure describes Paris as “not a place, but a way of life, unique, lustful and uninhibited.”

The author of the book, Ollie Stewart, was my father’s uncle, born in Louisiana in 1906. He was the first accredited black reporter as a war correspondent during World War II, and after the war, he lived in Paris until his death by death.

In the electronic book “Race Goes to War”, Antero Pietila and Stacy Spauly regibs the war trips of Uncle Ollie for the African American, a black newspaper based in Baltimore. He covered skirmishes in North Africa in 1942, the battle for Sicily in 1943 and the Normandy invasion in 1944.

He described the conditions of the segregated soldiers, attended the training of the aviators of Tuskegee, and was “treated as a celebrity in Afro and other black newspapers.”

After the war, instead of returning home in southern Jim Crow, he stayed in Paris, where I met him for the first and only time in 1976. He was a small child, he traveled with my parents, and I remember only fragments of visiting Uncle Ollie’s small apartment: his smoke of cigarettes, his lots of books and documents, his boiling black guy from uncle, his withdrawal.

Uncle Ollie died the following year. He never married and had no children. But his writing about Paris revives how he fell in love with the city. In addition to “Paris here, I come!” He wrote many other unpublished articles and essays from Paris, including a piece of 4000 words entitled “Café Sitting: A Way of Life”.

So, when I’m in Paris, as I was last year to cover the Olympic Games, I see Uncle Ollie’s words.

I thought “Paris here, I come!” He is over 70 years old, his approach feels energetic, fresh. “With money, a partner, a good stomach and an appreciation of the good life,” says the introduction, “Paris can be the most satisfying place in the world, also if the language does not speak!”

A few years ago, I stayed at a small hotel in the ninth district, near Montmartre. I checked to see what Uncle Ollie had to say about the nearby place Pigalle. He wrote: “You will have your choice of nude shows, private exhibitions, hemanda movies and men with dresses and women with pants.”

In fact, there were signs for table dances, lap dances, lingerie and “spécialista’s aphrodisia.” More than one store offered a sex toy in the form of the Eiffel Tower.

But these days Pigalle is also home to an McDonald’s and is full of bars and nightclubs frequented by young and elegant. The gorillas in the thresholds examine their circumscribed kingdoms while the customer lines smoke and laugh. Pop song fragments are filtered from the doors.

It is impossible to know what Uncle Ollie would think about that. But I know I would have disapproved of the giant suitcase that I packed to cover the Olympic Games. It was firmly against heavy luggage. “You may have to run to make a train, without a porter in sight,” he wrote, adding: “That is when packing the light will make you proud of yourself.”

The chapter “wine and liquor” of Uncle Ollie’s guide insists that “Champagne is the perfect drink”. And it’s still.

For me, no Paris trip is complete without bubbling; I am partial at 75 and Kir French Royales. I have drunk champagne in front of the magnificent view in the Sky Bar on the 34th floor of the Hyatt next to the Palais des Congrès; In the cinematographic bar with wooden panels with little light in Le Meurice Hotel; and outside in the Parisian air in several sidewalk coffees, as Uncle Ollie did.

When it comes to an attentive service, I give myself a tip, I even thought that Uncle Ollie’s guide complains: “Americans usually spoil everything when giving too much wherever they go.”

Some of Uncle Ollie’s restaurants and bars recommended closed years ago. But the duration of the Olympic Games, took his advice and had dinner at him in Montparnasse. Uncle Ollie described him as a good place to “sit down and see the world to pass” and pointed out that Hemingway was once a usual one.

While sliding a bifurcation in a delicate piece of fish and admired the plates: octagonal, stamped with Art Deco letters and an illustration of a server harassed in a jacket and apron, I asked me: Who had Uncle Ollie dined? What did they discuss? He had interviewed Josephine Baker in Morocco Duration of the war.

I like to imagine it at a table full of black expatriates that confer coffee while they return home, Brown v. The Education Board dominated the news.

His guide, written by a black man for a black audience, recognized the racial cruelty of the United States in 1953 and informed readers of his rights. Or Parisian coffees, he wrote: “Just enter anyone you want. There is no segregation in France, in restaurants or anywhere else.”

But “Paris here I come!” It does not live too much in the country that left behind, but encouraging readers to find pleasure in the city of light. The chapter “Paris after dusk” shows the non -deminatory and diplomatic character of Uncle Ollie, as he writes:

“Without knowing his marital status, the affiliation of his church or his bankrol, naturally, could not tell him what to do when he goes out to disappoint.

Or of course, some of the advice are outdated. Paris and the world have changed since 1953.

You can omit Uncle Ollie’s advice to obtain traveler checks, and the entire chapter about getting to Paris through the ship. His statement that “the French never serve or drink water with meals” is no longer true, special in establishments frequented by tourists. But the book positions of the Seine that attracted his are still there, and as he wrote: “When you get tired of the books and prints, you can sit in a bank and sleep in the sun. It is a good old French habit, and no one of a job for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not Swudge for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating for not sweating him for not sweating him

And Paris is still a big city to enter. In the tourist section of his guide, Uncle Ollie wrote: “Taking a walk and getting lost is the best way to learn a city.”

On a walk in the afternoon, I spent at least one dazzling milestone: the classic mass columns of the Madeleine; The bright winged monuments in the upper part of the Paris Opera; The Egyptian Obelisk in the place of the Concorde.

Walking The City reveals its musical rhythm: the narrow and twisted side streets open in noisy and bustling squares like a tintinous melody that gives way to a bustling choir.

To accompany this composition: visual delights. Triumphant angels, gargolas with grimaces, intricately forged balcony railings, bright green blinds, gray collaborated ceilings scored with curious bedroom windows. Beauty for the good of beauty.

When I crossed the Pont de la Concorde, I Wonde Wat Bridge was Uncle Ollie’s favorite. After the brutity of the war, if he had slowly traveled the quai d’Orsay and marveled at the great extravagance of Pont Alexandre III, with his shameless cherubs, smiling nymphs and gold accents, how was he doing now?

On page 21, Uncle Ollie wrote that if a reader requests a recommendation that is not in the guide pages, “he will have to look for me when he arrives in Paris, and we will see what we can do.”

Hey added:

My address is 7 rue du laos. With regard to time, it would be slippery to answer questions and show the city visitors that reward me equal to the amount I spend in your name.

So I walked to 7 rue du laos, taking the facade of Art Deco Stony, built in 1925, with carved poppies and iron ornaments that accentuates the doors and balconies.

It is only steps from the imposing complex of the 18th century of the military Ecola and the wide open park space of the Mars champion, which is located at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. I tried to imagine it, since I could have a leg in 1953, or in 1976, when I with Uncle Ollie. Perhaps some companies had changed the names, but surely the streets and cream -colored buildings were the same.

Althegh, the city was full of tourists, I was the only person stopped in front of 7 rue du laos, looking and taking photos. It is a beautiful building, but not one of the impressive and notable monuments, tourists go to Paris to see.

For me, it is a milestone. I imagine Uncle Ollie was late home, flush with wine and gossip, entering the door under a rain of chiseled flowers floating the stone on her head.

“You’re going to be a writer, like your uncle Ollie,” my father used to say, when he was young and ventured into poetry and fiction. When they sent me to Paris in the assignment, like Uncle Ollie once, he felt destined.

All my grandparents and my parents have died, and none of them left a lot in the path of tangible assets. No property, or precious stones or wedding dresses. What they transmitted is what they taught me, how they live, how they loved.

And Uncle Ollie’s guide is an invaluable relic. Beeró his passion for Paris and for exploring the world with humor and taste. Its directive is to take life and twist it, exploit expectations and limits, laughs, make their own rules and, for many bright moments as possible, they really enjoy the joy of living. As he wrote or spent an afternoon for Sena:

You can take a boat ride to the river, or disburse some francs to direct a fishing post from a Frenchman. You probably won one thing, but Neith the hundreds of people who fish daily in the Seine. But who cares? The sun is shining and you are alive and what would the boys say at home if they could see you now?

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