Monument to the Heroes of the Black Army

About

The Monument to the Heroes of the Black Army is a monumental bronze group erected both Bamako and Reims in 1924 to pay tribute to Senegalese tirailers who defended the city of Champagne during the First World War. The original work was by sculptor Paul Moreau-Vauthier (1871-1936) and architect Auguste Bluysen (1888-1951). It consisted of a granite pedestal reported from Africa, in the form of a tata — a fortification of West Africa — on which were engraved the names of the main battles in which African troops had been engaged.

On this pedestal was a bronze group representing four African soldiers of the Colonial Corps gathered behind a white officer wearing the French flag. A replica of the monument was erected in Bamako the same year. The monument was laid by the German occupier in September 1940 and then destroyed.

After being replaced by a stele in 1958, a new monument, by Jean-Marc Maya-Perez, was erected in 1963 at the same site. In 2013, a bronze copy of Moreau-Vauthier's original band, on a different pedestal, was erected, not far from there, at the...