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calijnaar t1_ir6hvaf wrote

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, is another example of a son of a French planter and an enslaved African woman. He did suffer from racial discrimination, but I would not say he did not have any form of status. He is the first known classical composer with African ancestry, and he became a succesful conductor. However, when he was proposed as the conductor of the Paris opera, this was denied after a petition of the opera singers to the queen asking her to prevent this. He later fought in the first all-black regiment in European history, the Légion St-Georges during the revolutionary wars. (There's an excellent YoU're Dead To Me episode about him, if you're interested)

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