The Soldier Who Demanded Independence

A Paris postman, a former volunteer soldier gassed at Verdun, wanted to go home to Senegal and could not afford the boat tickets. A surveillance service offered him the passage in exchange for names. Four years later, in Brussels, in front of Nehru, he demanded complete independence for the African colonies, and it was the French embassy that wrote it down. He died nine months later, aged thirty-eight.

Great figuresAfrican independencesColonial historyAnticolonial resistanceMemory and redressMaliSenegalLSLamine Senghor