Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Saturday that there will be a statue to Solitude, a black woman who fought against slavery in Guadeloupe. “With her courage and dignity, she opened the way to the abolition of slavery in France.”
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So Paris gets a statue of a black woman for the first time. Solitude fought against slavery in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in the early 1800s. Her resistance cost her her life. She was hanged at the age of 30.
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of the French capital, has already officially opened a park named after Solitude on Saturday. Mayor Hidalgo praised the black woman who “opened the way to the final abolition of slavery in France with her courage and dignity.”
The statue will be placed in the park. “A powerful symbol to never forget her struggle,” tweeted Mayor Hidalgo.
Colonial past
Guadeloupe is a French overseas territory. Slavery was abolished in France in 1794, but Napoleon sent troops to the island in 1802 to reintroduce the practice.
This led to a revolt, among others by many female ex-slaves. One of them was Solitude, which was hanged in 1802. Her execution was postponed for a day so that she could give birth. She was the daughter of a black slave girl and a white French sailor, who according to some sources raped her mother.
In France, too, there is a discussion about racism and police violence as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement that started in the US. Attention is also paid to the colonial past.
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