French Cities to Honor Moroccan WWII Soldiers with Street Names, Boosting Diversity Recognition

"France has a part of Africa in it. Our gratitude must be imperishable. I call on the mayors of France to keep alive through the name of our streets and squares the memory of the African fighters," Emmanuel Macron had said on August 15, 2019 in Saint-Raphaël (Var), during the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Provence landings.

Nearly a year after this announcement, things are taking shape. On the day after the second round of municipal elections, Geneviève Darrieussecq, Secretary of State to the Minister of the Armed Forces, handed over to a group of parliamentarians, on Wednesday, July 1, a booklet entitled To the Fighters of Africa, the Grateful Homeland, reports Le Monde Afrique. This is a 210-page work published by the Ministry of the Armed Forces. It is a question of encouraging mayors to rename streets, squares or public gardens after African combatants who died for France during the Second World War.

"By mixing their blood with our land, they paid a heavy price in the fight against Nazism," writes Ms. Darrieussecq in the foreword. The book is published as part of a partnership with the Association of Mayors of France and traces the history of the first contingents of soldiers that Africa had sent to General de Gaulle’s Free France. There were more than 70,000 men from sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 400,000 others from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

"The choice of soldiers was made taking into account the diversity of the French regions in which they fought [Burgundy, Brittany, Corsica...], as well as the variety of their countries of origin," explains Maxime Ruiz, memory mission officer at ONACVG and co-author of the booklet.

And to specify that: "if a mayor wishes to pay tribute to an African combatant who distinguished himself in his municipality, during the liberation for example, he can contact our services. An investigation will be carried out by the historical service of defense to propose a few names to him."