Adolphe Felix Sylvestre Eboué (1885-1944) was a governor of French Equatorial Africa. As a successful and apparently well-adjusted black Frenchman, he represented the epitome of French assimilationist policy.

Felix Eboué was born in Cayenne, French Guiana, on Dec. 26, 1885, the son of gold washer and of a comparatively well-educated mother. In 1901 he traveled to France on a scholarship to complete his secondary education at Bordeaux, where he also picked up an adolescent interest in the political ideas of French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès as well as a lifelong penchant for sport. Between 1904 and 1908 he pursued twin courses of study at the Paris Law School and at the École Coloniale.

Early Civil Service

Upon graduating from the École Coloniale in 1908, Eboué asked to be assigned to the French Congo (modern Republic of Congo), an area which had just acquired considerable notoriousness as a...