Cyrille Bissette

A free person of color (homme de couleur) from Martinique, his radical activities and publications galvanized the abolition movement in France and its colonies.

But men of color later might find themselves impressed into service or re-enslaved because they failed to prove their status to the satisfaction of current authorities attempting to reinstate the former colonial regime.

In 1822, these circumstances led to a slave revolt in Martinique, and in turn to stricter "security measures" that affected both free persons of color as well as those who had been questionably enslaved.

[9] Following their conviction in 1824, Bissette and his two friends had their property confiscated, were sentenced to life as a galley slave, and were branded with the letters GAL[10] They were then deported to Paris.

[23] In the first issue, Bissette praised the Charte des Îles, an 1833 law through which "free men of all colors" were granted full political and civil rights, while noting that "the colonies have as yet encountered the grand principles of philanthropy only as a theory; as for the actual practice of freedom, forget it.

"[24] In addition to abolitionist arguments, Bissette published news on the horrors of slavery, profiles of high-achieving men of African descent, and eulogies of the Haitian Revolution.

[25] He helped further the literary careers of black intellectuals such as the Haitian writers Ignace Nau and Beauvais Lespinasse; the Martiniquais poet and politician Pierre-Marie Pory-Papy; and the New Orleanian playwright Victor Séjour.