French mayor removes national symbol of freedom statue from town hall because she's black

A French mayor is set to remove an iconic statue of a woman symbolising France from his town hall - because she is black.

The statue of Marianne features in thousands of public buildings in France as a national symbol of freedom and democracy in the French Republic.

 

The effigies are usually of a white female wearing a cap, but for the last 16 years the statue in the council building in Fremainville, northern France, has been of a black woman.

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The black Marianne statue has been in Fremainville town hall since 1999, but new mayor Marcel Allegre deemed it not to be an appropriate representation of the French symbol - and had it removed

But the town's mayor Marcel Allegre, who won local elections in March, has now ordered it to be removed.

He said: 'This black sculpture was a Marianne of liberty, but not a Marianne of the 

French Republic. She undoubtedly represented something, but not the French Republic.'

Although Marianne is considered to be a national symbol, there is no official legislation how it should appear.

The black Marianne's 'eviction' from Fremainville has now sparked outrage from the country's minority rights groups.

Thaiba Bruni, spokeswoman for the Representative Council of France's Black Associations, said: 'Either we live in a white and racial Republic, and Marcel Allegre is right, or we live in a diverse Republic, and the mayor of Fremainville is wrong.'

The organization is also calling upon France's National Association of Mayors to pick 'black, Arab or Asian woman' as a new Marianne.

Maurice Maillet, the former mayor of Fremainville, in northern France, pictured, said he could see no reason why Marianne should not be black

Maurice Maillet, the town's mayor for 25 years until losing to Allegre, was confused by the decision.

“I don’t see any reason why the French Republic would not be black,' he told France24. 'Just look at France’s national football team.'

The decision to remove the black Marianne has also triggered a row in social media.

One Twitter user wrote: 'In Fremainville, the first black Marianne de France is to be scrapped by the new mayor..It's stupid.'

A reader of le Parisien newspaper wrote: 'It's very beautiful, and it's a shame especially in these troubled times to do this.'

But another commented: 'We need to stop massacring the symbols of our history in the name of 'multiculturalism'.

'White or black, and why not yellow, our MARIANNE has always been white because we are in France, until proven otherwise, we are a white country.'

Fremainville's Mayor Allegre has now told Le Parisien that he will not scrap the black Marianne, but instead place it in another municipal building in his town.