Marc Tovalou Quénum 🌐

Prince Kojo Tovalou Houénou (Marc Tovalou Quénum) was born on April 25, 1887, in Ouidah, Dahomey, into the prestigious royal lineage of Allada. Educated in Bordeaux and Paris, he became an accomplished physician, lawyer, and decorated French army medical officer during World War I.

In 1924 in Paris, he founded the Ligue Universelle de Défense de la Race Noire and the journal Les Continents, vigorously denouncing the brutal colonial 'indigénat' code. Traveling to New York in 1924, he was received with immense acclaim at Marcus Garvey's Fourth International Convention of the Negro Peoples. Persecuted by French colonial authorities, he died in detention in Dakar in 1936.