In 1945, the colonized population of Algeria was granted representation at the French Parliament for the first time. Although this representation was not proportionate to the size of the population, elections arouse great expectations for social and political reforms. Political representation had been demanded for decades; many saw the opportunity of passing the reforms towards autonomy. As one of the deputies put it, “We have been waiting for this moment for 116 years”. Three legislative elections within two years led to the rapid succession of several groups of representatives, all of whom were well-known, charismatic leaders who worked hard to present legislation, taking part in debates and playing by the rules of the Assembly. Nevertheless, by 1948, the rigging of the elections by the French administration was so efficient that no nationalist leader stood a chance. The composition of the group of deputies reflected French policy in Algeria; it was also affected by political practices within the Assembly itself. The suppression of the Algerian constituencies in 1962, meanwhile, when Algeria became independent, revealed the complexity and contradictions of France parting with a piece of itself. This paper will offer a precise account of this group’s history, drawn from parliamentary debates, contemporary newspaper reports and autobiographies. These permit an anthropological description of the way the colonized representatives behaved, spoke and performed within the Assembly arena according to their political belonging. Discursive practices are particularly telling: some representatives evidently mastered the Byzantine rituals and complex vocabulary of the Assembly, and were active in producing speeches and texts promoting reforms; others presented themselves as “apprentices in democracy”, willingly accepting the criticism of supposedly more experienced metropolitan deputies. Photographs add a gestural perspective as well as revealing the variety of clothing that the colonized representatives brought into the Assembly. The debates also illuminate the reactions of the metropolitan deputies: sympathy or (more often) hostility were not always linked directly to the content of the discourse, but also to their mastery of the French political language, their physical attitudes, and the absence of the expected colonized inhibition in some of them. By adopting a chronological approach, the paper shows how genuine representatives of the colonized population were progressively excluded – in a variety of ways – from taking part in parliamentary work, forcing them to find other arenas to develop their political activities.