The true story of the Agojie, the army in "The Woman King"

Brut America

They are the only documented all-female army in modern history.   This is the story of Agojie, the elite army at the heart of the movie, "The Woman King".

Transcript

00:00The Agoge were the unruly ones.

00:02They were considered unattractive.

00:05They were told to stifle their pain.

00:07They basically trained from sunup to sundown.

00:21You are called to join the king's garden.

00:24No kingdom in all of Africa shares this privilege.

00:29It was also a very unique thing around the world.

00:31There are examples of other all-female armies.

00:34If you look through history,

00:35it's not just something that's rare to the continent.

00:57They were also there for each other.

00:59They lived and died for each other.

01:00It was this incredible sisterhood.

01:03A lot of these women were from different neighbouring tribes and villages.

01:08And so the actual composition of the army itself is very diverse.

01:13You have people who have left their families

01:16or people who have left raided villages.

01:18But there was a use for them.

01:21And that was to create this army.

01:23And they trained hard.

01:24And they were formidable.

01:30They basically were given to the kingdom.

01:33Now the stipulation was they couldn't get married.

01:36They couldn't have kids.

01:37They couldn't have sex.

01:38They were trained in martial arts.

01:40They were even trained in dancing, running.

01:43They were told to stifle their pain.

01:45That was a big, big, big thing.

01:47To be taught how to not feel pain,

01:50which is still something that I can't quite get my mind around.

01:54Because how?

01:56It was such an organic way of really taking young women's trauma

02:00and turning them into complete power.

02:03We fear no one.

02:05And we fear no pain.

02:27My king, the Europeans wish to conquer us.

02:31They will not stop until the whole of Africa is theirs.

02:35It was back-to-back war.

02:36And then they actually faced the Europeans.

02:39And there was waves and waves of, unfortunately,

02:42individuals who came in to try and change things in the landscape.

02:45I think King Gezo himself actually died in a coup.

02:48There's a whole bunch of conflict surrounding their existence.

02:51But also King Gezo, he understood the...

02:54He understood the gods ordained these women to be empowered

02:59and to be in this position.

03:00It was kind of like a fresh revamp to empowering them

03:04to protect the kingdom,

03:06which wasn't only a physical thing or a military thing.

03:09It was actually a spiritual thing also.

03:11You are asking me to take them to war?

03:14Some things are worth fighting for.

03:25I know growing up in America,

03:28what you're taught is that our history begins with enslavement.

03:31And there's a whole continent where we all came from

03:34that we don't know about.

03:35We don't know about the beauty of Africa,

03:37the beauty about all these different cultures,

03:39the fight that went into maintaining their cultures.

03:42And I wanted to bring that to the screen.

03:44And that is the conversation Viola and I had when we started this.

03:49We've got to show these women's humanity.

03:51We've got to show black women's humanity.

03:53We've got to show black women's humanity.

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