🧵Drawing #AndréeBlouin (1921-1986), born 101 years ago today in the Central African Republic. She was an anti-colonial activist, pan-Africanist, and feminist who was key to the liberation movements in French-Guinea, the Belgian Congo, and other African countries.
A thread. 1/5
The lives of revolutionary women often go unrecorded – one of the reasons we began making portraits at @tri_continental was to recover our rich collective archive.
#AndréeBlouin was much more than “the woman behind Lumumba,” and formed part of DRC's first Cabinet. 2/5
Exiled to France after Lumumba’s assassination, #AndréeBlouin stayed a life-long pan-Africanist:
'I want Africa to be loved. I speak of my country, Africa, because I want her to be known... Knowing comes first, then love. Where there is knowledge, surely there will be love.’ 3/5
#AndréeBlouin's autobiography begins with: ‘As punishment for the crime of being born of a white father & a black mother I spent my early years in a prison for children…in the French Congo. The time was the dark years of colonialism in Africa.’
PDF: shorturl.at/nsJKX 4/5
Today, brave young comrades in the DRC have created a new political space in Kinshasa in her honour, the #AndréeBlouin Cultural Center. Here’s an International Women’s Day event held early this year 5/5
As we speak now, dozens of Congolese youth are gathered at the #AndréeBlouin Cultural Center to celebrate the anniversary of her birth. Here's the livestream: fb.watch/hs3D0jcMSl/
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