French revolutionary and anarchist (1830-1905)
She was the daughter of a nobleman's concubine. As a schoolteacher,
she refused to take the oath of allegiance to the emperor. She became
a political activist and writer, and became well known for her courage
on the barricades in the Paris Commune of 1870. The government deported
her to New Caledonia, a French colony in the southwest Pacific, where
she took up the cause of the indigenous Kanak. Michel returned to Paris
to a tumultuous welcome by the working classes and hateful attacks by
the press, which attacked her for being mannish. She became a major speaker
at popular meetings and international anarchist conferences. She founded
a libertarian school in London in the 1890s, but continued to speak and
travel until her death.
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