Jean-Baptiste Belley

French First Republic state institutions Jacobins and French revolutionary radicals 1746–1805 ○ Died under house arrest

Formerly enslaved deputy for Saint-Domingue, the first Black member of the National Convention, who spoke in the abolition debate of 1794

Born on Gorée in Senegal in 1746 or 1747, he was sold at two to slavers bound for Saint-Domingue, bought his own freedom and later owned slaves himself. In 1793 he fought the royalists as an infantry captain and was wounded six times. On 24 September 1793 he was elected with Mills and Dufaÿ as one of the three deputies for northern Saint-Domingue, becoming the first Black member of the National Convention, where he sat with the Montagnards. He spoke in the debate of February 1794 in which the Convention abolished slavery and answered Gouly's call to restore slavery by denouncing the Massiac Club. Re-elected to the Council of Five Hundred in 1796, he returned to Saint-Domingue in 1802 as a gendarme officer with Leclerc's expedition, was arrested and sent back, and died under house arrest at Belle-Île in 1805.