Andrée Blouin’s son, René, was two years old when he contracted malaria. When she took him to the hospital for treatment, doctors refused to treat him – because he was one-quarter Black!
She raised Hell, but they refused. René died soon after – and it changed everything.
Using her son’s death as motivation to fight the system, she spent the next decade reinventing herself – and Blouin eventually became the “most dangerous woman in Africa!”
Blouin became a crucial advisor to leaders of newly-independent nations across Africa, from Algeria to Ghana.
She campaigned for the leader of one of the largest political parties in the Belgian Congo, and worked to increase literacy and healthcare access for Congolese women.
A true pan-Africanist, she was even Patrice Lumumba’s co-conspirator for liberation. Whites feared her power – so they accused her of being a communist and a witch!
We are still experiencing the lasting effects of colonization today. And like Blouin, too many Black mothers know the insufferable pain of losing a child to white supremacist violence.
White supremacy, she argued, was “no longer a matter of my own maligned fate but a system of evil whose tentacles reached into every phase of African life.” Even if we don’t feel affected directly, it affects all Black people.
We must ALL work to dismantle the system of white supremacy and its many branches!