Brief History of L'Alliance Francaise de Detroit

L'Alliance Française de Détroit is one of the oldest Alliances Françaises in the United States.  On March 3, 1902, 33 delegates from U.S. cities gathered in New York to form the Federation des Alliances Françaises USA.  Detroit was represented.  The 33 original chapters have grown to 147 American Alliances but only 22 of the founding Alliances are still in existence.

We have no record of the Detroit Alliance between 1902 and the end of World War II but evidently it somehow survived.  After World War II, a number of Detroit Francophiles helped to revive the Detroit Alliances including Bernhard Walker, Jim Barnes, William Bostick, and Donat Gauthier.  Donat, who was a French-Canadian, had been appointed the French Agent Consulaire, but in 1953 he was replaced by Jean Beliard, the first French Career Consul in Detroit.

In 1970 a number of Detroit members who lived in Grosse Pointe decided that they wanted an Alliance closer to their homes, so the Alliance Française of Grosse Pointe was founded.  In the 1970s the Detroit Alliance offered French language classes under the direction of Ludmilla Von Taube who wanted to operate the classes independent of the Detroit Alliance, so she established the French Institute of Michigan which qualified as the third Alliance in the greater Detroit area.  The three Alliances have an amiable relationship, share programs and promote the avowed goal of the Alliances Françaises:  "To Promote French Culture and Language."  After all, our city was founded over 300 years ago by a Frenchman who gave it a French name!

Tout homme a deux pays, le sien et la France!

-Thomas Jefferson