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 is known historically that many Sephardi Jews came following the Spanish "Reconquista". In 1870, Justice Minister Adolphe Crémieux wrote a proposal, "décret Crémieux", giving French citizenship to Algerian Jews. This advancement was resisted by part of the larger "Pied-Noir" community and in 1897 a wave of anti-Semitic riots occurred in Algeria. During World War II the "décret Crémieux" was abolished under the Vichy regime, and Jews were barred from professional jobs between 1940 and 1943. Citizenship was restored in 1943. Thus, the Jews of Algeria eventually came to be considered part of the "Pied-Noir" community, and many fled the country