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By Magaly Muñoz
A young Ricki Stevenson, born in the Bay Area and immersed in the deep history of Black people in America, knew two things: she wanted to be a journalist and live in Paris one day.
The dreams of moving to Paris would start early for Stevenson, as she had long heard stories from her mother, who was a professional dancer, about wanting to visit the ‘City of Love.” Stevenson’s father had promised her mother that one day he would take her and over the years of hearing them talk about these plans, she was determined to end up there herself.
But before that would ever happen, she had a tumultuous career as a newscaster across the country that was inspired by her family’s history in civil rights issues.
Stevenson recalled marching with Cesar Chavez as he fought for labor rights for farm workers in California. Until that point, she’d only heard about the struggles and fights for Black people.
“Are we Mexican now?” she asked her parents. “No, but we are fighting for what’s right,” they responded to her.
Her family also had ties to living in Greenwood, Oklahoma during the time of Black Wall Street, where Black people had oil wells, banks, and thriving businesses before being bombed in 1921.
This background would propel her into a long 25-year journalism career, interviewing greats like James Baldwin, serving as a United Nations correspondent, and hosting radio shows in the Bay Area.
In the late 90s, Stevenson finally realized her dream of living in Paris, now with her daughter. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend gave her a stack of cash and encouraged her to expand on the knowledge that she had only started to share with people she knew.
“Admiral Tony [family friend] put a chunk of money in my hand. He said, ‘Ricky, I’ve been coming here for 20 years, and with you and Dedie, I’ve seen more in two days than I’ve seen in those years, ’” Stevenson said.
Years after BPT took off, she met Miguel Overton Guerra, who would become a senior scholar guide for her tours. He has fulfilled this role for over eight years and continues to do so.
Guerra shared that having something like the Black Paris Tours allows those who didn’t know how much influence Black people had in Europe to now know that they can learn from those before them and follow in their successes or correct their mistakes.
“I always tend to have a feeling for history always being a means of a reference point backward…you start to understand the history, that it isn’t just the United States that has Black people,” Guerra said.
He said that it’s been a pleasure to watch people learn something they didn’t know before and to take them through the city to key points in Black history, like hangout spots for writers like Baldwin and Richard Wright, restaurants in the busiest parts of Paris, the home of Josephine Baker and so much more.
Although the tours are open to all, Guerra hopes that those of African descent from all over the world will embrace the fact that they don’t have to stay where they are because movies and media have portrayed cities like Paris as only white; it’s multicultural and accepting of all.
“We’ve been here and we’ve been there, going way back when and we shouldn’t be considered or consider ourselves to be strangers in any place that we go to,” he said.
In the years that have followed, Stevenson claims they’ve had 100,000 people come through BPT, with notable guests like former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Steve Harvey, Lil Nas X and more.
Friends and former colleagues of Stevenson have also long visited and taken tours with her or Guerra, complimenting them on how well they know the city and their ability to always keep it interesting.
“He [Guerra] just had a deep, deep wealth of knowledge and he was constantly supplanting information with historical facts and the like. I absolutely love that it was demonstrating and showing how Black people have thrived in Paris or contributed to the culture in Paris,” Candice Francis said.
She toured in the summer of 2022 and stated that in the two weeks they visited Paris, BPT was the highlight of her trip. She shared that she was proud of Stevenson and the life she’d managed to manifest and build for herself.
“Even if you’re visiting Paris for the 10th time, if you haven’t taken the tour, then by all means, take it,” Francis emphasized.
You can book your own adventure with Black Paris Tours at blackparistour.com.
