Birthday of Frantz Fanon
July 20, 1925
Uncredited photo from first edition dust jacket of Black Skin, White Masks published in US in 1967, without an explicit copyright notice
From BlackPast:
Psychiatrist and anti-colonial cultural theorist, Frantz Fanon was born in the French West Indies, in Fort-de-France, Martinique on July 20, 1925. Frantz Fanon studied under the poet Aimé Césaire. Under Césaire, a man who asserted black dignity through his concept of Negritude. In 1943, Fanon left for Dominica to enlist in the Free French forces. He served in Morocco and Algeria in 1944 and 1945. Though Fanon was commended for his bravery, the racism he experienced in the army led him to reject WWII as a white man’s war. After service he earned his PhD in Psychiatry at University of Lyon, and published his first book Black Skin, White Masks in 1952. A year later, he was assigned to head the psychiatric division of a hospital in Algeria. He joined the Algerian liberation movement when the insurrection against French rule began in 1954. His subsequent books, Studies in a Dying Colonialism (1959) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), would give a voice to the Third World liberation struggles of that time.
Psychiatrist and anti-colonial cultural theorist, Frantz Fanon was born in the French West Indies, in Fort-de-France, Martinique on July 20, 1925. Frantz Fanon studied under the poet Aimé Césaire. Under Césaire, a man who asserted black dignity through his concept of Negritude. In 1943, Fanon left for Dominica to enlist in the Free French forces. He served in Morocco and Algeria in 1944 and 1945. Though Fanon was commended for his bravery, the racism he experienced in the army led him to reject WWII as a white man’s war. After service he earned his PhD in Psychiatry at University of Lyon, and published his first book Black Skin, White Masks in 1952. A year later, he was assigned to head the psychiatric division of a hospital in Algeria. He joined the Algerian liberation movement when the insurrection against French rule began in 1954. His subsequent books, Studies in a Dying Colonialism (1959) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), would give a voice to the Third World liberation struggles of that time.