Derrida was born on July 15, 1930, in El Biar (Algiers), French Algeria, into a Sephardic Jewish family originally fromToledo that became French in 1870 when the Crémieux Decree granted full French citizenship to the indigenous Arabic-speaking Jews of French Algeria.He was the third of five children. His parents, Aimé Derrida (1896–1970)and Georgette Sultana Esther Safar (1901–1991), named him Jackie, after American actor Jackie Coogan though he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris.His youth was spent in El-Biar, Algeria.
On the first day of the school year in 1942, Derrida was expelled from his lycée by French administrators implementinganti-Semitic quotas set by the Vichy government. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students, and also took part in numerous football competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player). In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers such as Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Gide, an instrument of revolt against the family and society:
