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Home Globe France racism: Paris to commemorate slave rebellion figure
Globe

France racism: Paris to commemorate slave rebellion figure

by editor September 27, 2020
September 27, 2020

image copyrightGetty Images

image captionMayor Hidalgo opened the Solitude Garden on Saturday

Paris is to put up a statue of a black woman involved in a 1802 rebellion against slavery on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

The woman, named only Solitude, was captured and possibly executed.

Opening a public garden in her honour on Saturday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called Solitude a “heroine” and a “strong symbol”.

France’s history of slavery has been under new scrutiny, in part because of the US Black Lives Matter protests.

  • Statue vandalised in row over French slavery code

  • Colonial abuses haunt France’s racism debate

There has been soul-searching over public commemoration of colonial figures such as 17th-Century statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who codified overseas slavery and is remembered by a statue outside the national parliament in Paris.

But President Emmanuel Macron has spoken against removing statues or names of controversial figures, offering instead a “clear-headed look at our history and our memory”.

Who was Solitude?

Very little is known for sure, with just one brief written mention in a 19th-Century history of Guadeloupe, according to Unesco.

That account records that Solitude, a mixed-race woman, was arrested among “a band of insurgents” during an uprising against slavery – which had been reinstated by Napoleon after being abolished during the French Revolution.

She was sentenced to death, the history notes, but allowed to give birth before being “tortured” – an ambiguous term which could mean she was indeed put to death, through flogging for example.

Solitude was portrayed in a 1972 work of fiction by French writer André Schwarz-Bart and a statue already honours her in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe.

The Solitude Garden is located on Place du Général Catroux in north-western Paris, where a statue will be erected in time.

While a statue of a black woman would be rare in the French capital, it would not be unprecedented. The US entertainer and French Resistance agent Josephine Baker (1906-75) has been honoured by both a square and a monument.

Related Topics

  • Racism

  • France
  • Paris
  • Slavery
  • Guadeloupe
  • Black Lives Matter

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