Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (25 October 1900 – 13 April 1978) was a Nigerian educator, political organiser and women's rights campaigner (Wikipedia). Born in Abeokuta, she was the first female student at the Abeokuta Grammar School. As a teacher she organised some of the earliest pre-school classes in the country and literacy classes for poorer women.

In the 1940s she founded the Abeokuta Women's Union, which demanded better representation of women in local government and an end to unfair taxes on market women; marches and protests of up to 10,000 women led by her forced the Alake of Egbaland to abdicate temporarily in 1949. She took part in the independence movement, joined delegations on Nigeria's constitution, led the creation of the Nigerian Women's Union and the Federation of Nigerian Women's Societies, and campaigned for women's right to vote.

She was born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas, the daughter of Daniel Olumeyuwa Thomas, who farmed and traded palm produce, and Lucretia Phyllis Omoyeni Adeosolu, a dressmaker. Her father's family belonged to the Saro community, returnees from Sierra Leone, many of them formerly enslaved Africans freed and resettled in Freetown before returning to Yorubaland in the nineteenth century. Her great-grandmother, Sarah Taiwo, had been captured by slave traders before eventually returning to her family in Abeokuta (Wikipedia). She was also the first woman in Abeokuta to drive a car.

From 1919 to 1922 she studied at Wincham Hall School for Girls in Cheshire, England, learning elocution, music, dressmaking and French. Before returning to Abeokuta in 1922 she stopped using her Christian names and took her Yoruba name, Funmilayo, meaning "God has given me joy" (Wikipedia).

She received the Lenin Peace Prize and membership of the Order of the Niger. Her children included the musician Fela Kuti, the doctor and activist Beko Ransome-Kuti and the health minister Olikoye Ransome-Kuti. She died at 77 after being wounded in a military raid on family property (Wikipedia).