Paulette Nardal (12 October 1896 – 16 February 1985) was a French writer from Martinique, a journalist, and one of the drivers of the development of black literary consciousness.

She was one of the authors involved in the creation of the Négritude genre and introduced French intellectuals to the works of members of the Harlem Renaissance through her translations.

As a journalist and author, she published works that advocated a Pan-African awareness and acknowledged the similarities of challenges faced by people due to racism and sexism.

Though an ardent feminist, she was not radical, encouraging women to work within the existing social structures to achieve political influence.

At the beginning of World War II, Nardal fled France but was injured when a submarine attacked her ship, causing a lifelong disability.

Returning to Martinique, she established feminist organizations and newspapers encouraging educated women to channel their energies into social improvement.

In October 1931, she founded a journal called La Revue du Monde Noir (Review of the Black World)[3] with her sisters; Louis Jean Finot, a French novelist; Léo Sajous, a Haitian scholar; and Clara W. Shepard, an African-American teacher and translator.

After the conclusion of the journal, Nardal began working as the secretary of Galandou Diouf, Senegalese deputy in the French National Assembly.

When forced to flee France in 1939 because of World War II,[6] Nardal boarded a ship flying under protection of the Red Cross.

She settled in Fort-de-France and initially worked as an English teacher for dissidents wanting to support General de Gaulle.

[18] La Revue du Monde Noir was presented as an apolitical publication that convinced the Ministry of Colonies to offer partial funding however, " the very act of founding a bilingual, international, and multiracial review in 1930s Paris was provocative,"[17] so the paper did not entirely avoid political commentary.

The paper quickly lost funding and only six issues of La Revue du Monde Noir were published before the journal stopped production in April 1932.

The communists won a majority of seats and, the following year, Nardal wrote several editorials stressing to women the importance of gaining an understanding of world issues and voting.

[24] While living in Paris Nardal and her sisters created a literary salon where people of all genders, races, and religions would gather to discuss local and international black politics, culture, and art.

[25] The Clamart Salon hosted a number of well known black intellectuals including figures from the Harlem Renaissance[25] and the three men known for founding the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas, and Léopold Sédar Sénghor.

[27] Both the later leaders of the Négritude movement and the group called Légitime Défense, made of up Afro-Caribbean radical surrealists and communists, were significantly influenced in their ideas by this essay, in which Nardal makes a case for African pride and acknowledgement of the shared history of slavery.

[29] Both Mamadou Badiane and Shireen K. Lewis argue that Nardal's reflections on race began nearly a decade before Césaire and Senghor were credited with founding the philosophy of Négritude, concluding that women were both the movement's founders and its inspiration.

[32] The Clamart Salon and La Revue du Monde Noir along with Paulette Nardal's translations of Harlem Renaissance writer's works[33] also allowed the founders of Négritude to meet with figures from the Harlem Renaissance whose work influenced and inspired the creation of Négritude.

[26] After having returned to Martinique, Nardal began implementing the ideas of industrial education, teaching women home economics to lift them out of poverty.

Le Rassemblement féminin was one of two feminist organizations in Martinique at the time whose goals were to increase the number of women who voted in the 1945 elections.

[36] Nardal believed that it was important for women to engage in both local and international politics and social work and she felt that the failure to inform students of global issues was a fundamental flaw in French curriculum.

[37] From 1946 to 1948 Nardal acted as a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

In this short essay, she claims that she sees "the mystical Body of Christ actualized"[41] in the United Nations charter, and that the UN's work reflects God's will.