Women's march on Grand-Bassam

[1] In December 1949 anticolonial PDCI-RDA political leaders, imprisoned without trial in Grand-Bassam jail, started a hunger strike.

Calling for their husbands to be released, a multiethnic coalition of women marched 30 miles from Abidjan to Bassam.

[2] The women left Abidjan on 22 December 1949, organized in small groups to evade colonial obstruction.

[4] In 1999 a monument to the women was raised in Place de la Paix in Grand-Bassam.

The statue's dedication reads: 'To our valiant women who, by their historic march on Grand-Bassam prison on 24-12-1949, wrested the confiscated freedom of men.'