Marseille and Humanity

Last post, I shared the first journal entry for my “Black Expatriate Writers in France” class. Today, I’m going to share the second and third entries from May 12, 2023 and May 16, 2023. I wrote the first entry after we moved from Avignon to Marseille and the second on the train from Marseille to Nice. If you would like more information about Marseille and some of my initial thoughts before visiting the port city check out “The Pan-Mediterranean Marseille.”

12 May 2023

It’s been a couple of days, and we’ve moved from Avignon to Marseille. What has been really interesting for me is seeing the students’ reactions to the different cities. Avignon was laid back, and Marseille is the complete opposite. It’s a cosmopolitan city, the second largest in France with 1.5 million people.

From the moment we disembarked from the plane in Marseille to catch our train to Avignon, students noticed the mixture of ethnicities, languages, and cultures. The move to Avignon changed the complexion of the populace, having more tourists mixed in with locals, mostly white. However, they did see a diverse population in Avignon with women wearing hijab and people speaking Arabic and African languages.

One of the first pieces they read for this course was a selection from Eddie Glaude’s Begin Again where he talks about coming to Europe and his journey to…