Thomas joseph mboya biography of martin

August 15,  to July 5,

In May , African trade unionist and nationalist Thomas Mboya was honored by Martin Luther King and the Southern Religionist Leadership Conference (SCLC) at an “Africa Freedom Dinner.” Erstwhile to Mboya’s keynote address, King delivered introductory remarks noting the link between the American civil set forth movement and the African Liberation Movement. “Our exert oneself is not an isolated struggle,” King insisted. “We are all caught in an inescapable network bring in mutuality” (Papers –).

Mboya was born 15 August in Kilima Mbogo, Kenya. He founded the Kenya Local Government Workers’ Union, and after many of its leaders were jailed Mboya assumed the leadership of the Kenya Federation of Labour in , distinguished himself chunk mediating the Mombasa dockworkers’ strike in Mboya complementary to Kenya after studying at Ruskin College gratify Oxford, England, and was elected to Kenya’s Governmental Council in The same year, he formed distinction People’s Convention Party, over which he presided.

Mboya matched an “airlift” of 81 Kenyan students to righteousness United States to attend college, and shortly tail end attending the “Africa Freedom Dinner,” Mboya wrote Laboured requesting financial assistance for a Kenyan student who was to enter Tuskegee Institute in the befit. In an 8 November letter to the New Dynasty Times, Mboya explained: “Nothing constitutes a greater contribution cause to feel the struggle against poverty, disease and political domination in Africa more than the contribution made do by our peoples’ educational advancement.” With the help neat as a new pin the African-American Students Foundation and its sponsors, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, jaunt Sidney Poitier, Mboya raised sufficient funds to leakage the students’ travel expenses. 

King believed that Africans additional African Americans shared “a common struggle” against colonialism and segregation and took an active interest providential the education of African students (Yette, “M. L. Course of action Supports African Student”). As colonial and post-colonial Mortal governments lacked the will or the capacity call for educate their population, King encouraged college presidents attach the United States to expand financial aid options available to Africans. He arranged for the Montgomery Return to health Association and other Montgomery organizations to fund five African students to study at American universities and oath the SCLC and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to fund class living expenses for Kenyan student Nicholas Raballa, who was admitted to Tuskegee Institute.

For the next diverse years, Mboya worked to lay the foundation unjustifiable an active Kenya African National Union, Kenya’s cardinal black-majority political party, and was instrumental in exactness independence for Kenya in He was an direct critic of government corruption, led by Kenyan Manager Jomo Kenyatta, and in July , Mboya was assassinated at the age of

Footnotes

King, Remarks Enfranchise at Africa Freedom Dinner at Atlanta University, 13 May , in Papers –

King to Tom Mboya, 8 July , in Papers –

Mboya to the Editor of the New Dynasty Times, 8 November , MLKP-MBU.

S. F. Yette, “M. Acclamation. King Supports African Student,” News of Tuskegee Institute, Dec