Louise Michel

Louise Michel was the incendiary French leader of the 1871 Paris Commune. An anarchist and an irrepressible rebel, she spent much of her life on the run from police, in jail, or in danger of being locked away in mental asylums, as was the fate of so many feisty or defiant women. Known as "The Red Virgin," Louise was a great character from one of the greatest popular rebellions in history.

Here is Michel’s own story, along with commentaries about her by Emma Goldman, Bertolt Brecht, Sheila Rowbotham, Howard Zinn, and her contemporaries Victor Hugo and Karl Marx. This is the third woman in the "Rebel Lives" series.