One of nine children, Émilie grew up in the working-class town of Neuves-Maisons in Eastern France where her father worked in the local steel mill.[1] Her father was involved in anarcho-syndicalism and she was engaged politically from an early age.[2] She moved to Paris and worked in a department store before meeting a young Algerian migrant and political activist, Messali Hadj.[3] As was often the case for working-class couples, they moved in together without officially getting married.[4] Their partnership, which produced two children, was marked by a shared commitment to progressive and anticolonial causes.[5] During Messali's long spells in prison, Émilie often spoke on his behalf and used her position as a Frenchwoman to pour particular scorn on France's declared commitment to "civilising" Algeria.[6]
She is perhaps best known as the creator of the Algerian flag. While there is some dispute over who exactly designed green and white with red star and crescent symbol,[7] Émilie is generally credited as having sewed the first version of the flag.[2]
She died in Algiers in 1953, while her husband was in exile in France. He was refused permission to visit her on her death bed. A cortege of 10,000 followed her coffin, draped in the Algerian flag, through the streets of the Algerian capital on its way to the port. Her funeral in Neuves-Maisons was attended by delegation from the major parties of the radical Left and her husband, under police surveillance, gave a eulogy recalling her activism and declaring her "the symbol of the union of the Algerian and French peoples in their shared struggle".[8]
A long forgotten figure, her hometown erected a plaque in her memory on the fiftieth anniversary of her death in 2003 while a 2015 documentary by director Rabah Zanoun introduced a French audience to her story for the first time.[2]
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