Pied-Noir Pied-Noir Pied-Noir (, ""Black-Foot""), plural Pieds-Noirs, is a term primarily referring to people of European, mostly ethnic French origin, who were born in Algeria during the period of French rule from 1830 to 1962. More broadly, it can refer to other foreign-origin persons, both Christian and Jewish, from all parts of the Mediterranean whose families had also migrated under French occupation in the 19th and 20th centuries to French Algeria, the French protectorate in Morocco, or the French protectorate of Tunisia, where many carried on living for several generations but fled or were expelled at the end of French rule
Pied-Noir French government's changed position towards Algeria. Until independence, Algeria was legally a part of France; after independence many felt that they had been betrayed and were now portrayed as an "embarrassment" to their country or to blame for the war. Most "Pied-Noirs" felt a powerful sense of loss and a longing for their lost homeland in Algeria. The American author Claire Messud remembered seeing her "pied-noir" father, a lapsed Catholic crying while watching Pope John Paul II deliver a Mass on his TV. When asked why, Messud "père" replied: “Because when I last heard the mass in Latin, I thought