Word: houphouet
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Dates: during 1956-1956
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Congratulations for a good presentation on the new French Cabinet member, Felix Houphouet-Boigny [Feb. 13]. It is refreshing to see old, weary French politicians call on a man from West Africa to rewrite the French Union; even more inspiring to see that they have found for the job a well-trained and well-prepared man who is a good Christian...
Your story refers to Minister Houphouet-Boigny as "the first Negro ever to hold Cabinet rank in France." This is not true. France has had Negro Cabinet members before, and it has accepted them with the same casualness as it has its many black Deputies...
...N.A.A.C.P.'s Ivy correctly states that other Negroes have held Cabinet posts in France. TIME should have said that Minister Houphouet-Boigny is the first West African Negro to achieve Cabinet rank. Two French Negroes held major Cabinet offices before him: Cuban-born Severiano de Heredia, who became a French citizen, Mayor of Paris and Minister of Public Works, 1887; Martinique-born Henri Lémery, who was Minister of Justice...
...People have confidence in me, but they don't have patience to wait," said Houphouet-Boigny last week. "Unless the French act quickly, I will lose control of our people-and blood will flow in Africa...
...Houphouet" is a Baule word meaning "pit for excrement." His father's parents, desperate when their first four children died in infancy, adopted the tribal custom of giving the fifth child a name indicating that he was unloved, unlovable and worthless, to divert the evil spirits that had taken the first four. The local sorcerer recommended Houphouet. "It worked," says Houphouet-Boigny, who. like all his descendants, must forever bear the name which saved his father...