Alexandre Dumas

The grandson of an enslaved woman from Saint-Domingue and son of one of Napoleon's generals, Dumas wrote "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" and became the most widely read French author in the world.

He was moved to the Panthéon in 2002, two hundred years after his birth. At the ceremony the president said plainly that the racism Dumas had faced in life was part of why it had taken so long.