By Dannie Gore

Victor Sejour, New Orleans Mulatto, rose to be France’s most popular playwright in the 1850s.

Born in 1817, he won distinction at the age of 17 with his first poem. In 1836 his parents sent
him to Paris to escape America’s color prejudice.

Here he became private secretary to Louis Napoleon, later Emperor Napoleon III. Sejour’s first play, “The Return of
Napoleon,” won him brilliant recognition; much money; and opened to him literary circles where he met among others Alexander Dumas. Sejour wrote 22 plays, all of which were performed in Paris, but his vogue passed, and he died in poverty at the age of 57.