Jeanne Martin Cissé

employee for French colonial administration, was Malinke with Soninke origins (from her paternal grandmother) and her mother (Damaye Soumah), midwife, Soussou.

She met future President Ahmed Sékou Touré, then a PTT trade unionist, and joined the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain in December 1947.

She lived in Senegal with her husband in the 1950s and represented the Senegalese Democratic Union at the Congress of the International Federation of Women in France in October 1954.

[citation needed] In 1972, Martin Cissé was appointed as Guinea's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

[8] After the failed coup attempt of Diarra Traoré in July 1985, she left Guinea, moving first to Senegal and then to the United States.

[5] In 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush sent a message of congratulations on Martin Cissé's 80th birthday, acknowledging "her courage and her work".

[10] In 2014, South African President Jacob Zuma awarded Martin Cissé the Oliver Tambo Order to acknowledge her role as a leader and model in the struggle for women's rights in Africa.