Touring the National Center for Civil and Human Rights—a must-see if you’re in Atlanta, by the way—my husband commented, “We need a museum of Black opulence.” Luckily for Atlantans, we have one—the APEX Museum—but I understood immediately what my husband meant. Black history is so much more than overcoming hardship. Black people descended from kings and queens. They were great architects, scholars, and musicians long before the first slave ships arrived at the coastal port of the English colony of Virginia in August 1619 and long after.
Academy Award-winning actor Viola Davis is honoring part of that history in her newest work, The Woman King, which Davis stars in and produced alongside her husband Julius Tennon, producer Cathy Schulman, and actor Maria Bello, the news site Deadline reported. Davis portrays Nanisca, the general of an all-female warrior troop. The movie is a historical drama directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and is set to reach theaters on Sept. 16. It pays tribute to the West African kingdom of Dahomey and specifically the Ahosi “king’s wives,” also known as Mino, “our mothers.” They were the “only female soldiers in the world who then routinely served as combat troops,” Smithsonian Magazine reported.
Davis tweeted on Tuesday: “I’m deeply honored and excited to bring this incredible story of these badass female warriors to life.”
Smithsonian Magazine writer Mike Dash wrote of missionary Francesco Borghero witnessing a "mock assault" by the Dahomean warriors in the town square in 1861: "The Dahomean troops are a fearsome sight, barefoot and bristling with clubs and knives. A few, known as Reapers, are armed with gleaming three-foot-long straight razors, each wielded two-handed and capable, the priest is told, of slicing a man clean in two," Dash wrote. "The soldiers advance in silence, reconnoitering. Their first obstacle is a wall—huge piles of acacia branches bristling with needle-sharp thorns, forming a barricade that stretches nearly 440 yards. The troops rush it furiously, ignoring the wounds that the two-inch-long thorns inflict."
Dash described the general's speech after the event. "Borghero listens, but his mind is wandering. He finds the general captivating: ‘slender but shapely, proud of bearing, but without affectation,’” Dash wrote. “Not too tall, perhaps, nor excessively muscular. But then, of course, the general is a woman, as are all 3,000 of her troops.”
Warning: Videos in this story may contain footage that is triggering for some viewers.
Former Atlanta Black Star writer Kiersten Willis described the fighters as "expertly trained" and known for their ability to precisely decapitate opponents in battle. “They were protectors of the king but became fearless warriors trained to kill,” BBC Africa reported. “They struck fear into the hearts of European colonizers.”
The women have been said to be the inspiration for the Dora Milaje, the bodyguards of the fictional King T’Challa, who was played by the late actor Chadwick Boseman in the film the Black Panther.
Referred to by European travelers as the “Dahomey Amazons,” the Mino were initially recruits from “foreign captives and prisoners,” Teen Vogue writer Jazzi Johnson explained. “Between the middle of the 18th and 19th century, the Dahomey army's numbers swelled from about 600 to about 6,000, with some estimates putting the total at about 8,000,” she wrote. “By the peak of their reign, most of the warriors were natives. Many observers at the time counted thousands of female warriors among the army's ranks.”
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