Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti remembered in a Google Doodle

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti remembered in a Google Doodle on what would have been her 77th birthday.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti Biography, Age, Awards, Death

Funmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti, was a teacher, political campaigner, women’s rights activist and traditional aristocrat in Nigeria. She served with distinction as one of the most prominent leaders of her generation. She was also the first woman in the country to drive a car.

Born as Francis Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas, she was the first female student at the Abeokuta Grammar School (a secondary school), which she attended from 1914 to 1917. Ransome-Kuti’s political activism led to her being described as the doyenne of female rights in Nigeria, as well as to her being regarded as “The Mother of Africa.” Early on, she was a very powerful force advocating for the Nigerian woman’s right to vote. She was described in 1947, by the West African Pilot, as the “Lioness of Lisabi” for her leadership of the women of the Egba people on a campaign against their arbitrary taxation. That struggle led to the abdication of the high king Oba Ademola II in 1949.

Kuti was the mother of the Nigerian activists Fela Anikulapo Kuti, a musician; Beko Ransome-Kuti, a doctor; and Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a doctor and health minister. She was also grandmother to musicians Seun Kuti and Femi Kuti. She is highly regarded in her native Nigeria for notable acts as an African woman.

Ransome-Kuti received the national honour of membership in the Order of the Niger in 1965. The University of Ibadan bestowed upon her the honorary doctorate of laws in 1968. She also held a seat in the Western House of Chiefs of Nigeria as an Oloye of the Yoruba people.

In old age her activism was overshadowed by that of her three sons, who provided effective opposition to various Nigerian military juntas. In 1978 Ransome-Kuti was thrown from a third-floor window in her son Fela’s compound, a commune known as the Kalakuta Republic, when it was stormed by one thousand armed military personnel. She lapsed into a coma in February of that year, and died on 13 April 1978 as a result of her injuries.

After Ransome-Kuti’s death, Fela took her coffin and travelled nearly twenty kilometers to Dodan Barracks in Lagos (then Nigeria’s Supreme Military Headquarters), leaving the coffin at the gate in an attempt to shame the government. The invasion, her death, and the movement of the coffin is detailed in his song “Coffin for Head of State”.