Aline Sitoe Diatta (1920–1944) (alter: Aline Sitow Diatta and Alyn Sytoe Jata): a Senegalese heroine of the resistance to French colonialism, often called the Joan of Arc or the Marianne of Senegal.
Diola royalty living in the village of Kabrousse, Basse Casamance, Aline Sitoe Diatta was one of the leaders of a tax resistance movement during the Second World War. While Diola resistance had never really ended since the region was annexed to French West Africa in 1914, in 1942 the French government began seizing as much as half the area's rice harvest for their war effort.
When a boycott begun by market women proved successful, the French authorities imprisoned the boycott's leadership. Aline Sitoe Diatta, esteemed as a Diola queen and believed to have religious powers, was marked out by authorities as a leader. She remained in prison, and was deported to a jail in Timbuctu in 1943. There she died of disease in 1944.
Since her death, Aline Sitoe Diatta has become one of the best known symbols of resistance in West Africa, and a national symbol in Senegal, especially in Casamance. An area of Dakar, near Cheikh Anta Diop University is named cité Aline Sitoé Diatta, a stadium bears her name, and numerous schools, businesses, and organizations are named after her.
The latest use of her name is the new passenger ferry MV Aline Sitoe Diatta as replacement for the 2002 sank MV Le Joola.