Tom Mboya

Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya was born on August 15, 1930, on a sisal plantation in Kilima Mbogo. Educated at Mangu High School and Ruskin College, Oxford, he emerged as General Secretary of the Kenya Local Government Workers Union and the Kenya Federation of Labour (KFL) during the Mau Mau State of Emergency.

At age twenty-eight, Mboya chaired the historic 1958 All-African Peoples' Conference in Accra. Between 1959 and 1963, collaborating with John F. Kennedy, Jackie Robinson, and Harry Belafonte, he organized the famous 'Airlift America', sending hundreds of East African students to US universities. As Minister for Economic Planning, he authored the blueprint Sessional Paper No. 10 on African Socialism. He was assassinated in Nairobi on July 5, 1969, an irreparable blow to Kenyan democracy.