Jomo Kenyatta

In the years prior to the Mau Mau Uprising, discontent with Kenya's status as a British colony was growing, and many people were stepping up to lead a rapidly expanding nationalist movement. At the forefront of the conflict between colony and colonizer was a Kikuyu (Kenya's largest and most powerful ethnic group) named Jomo Kenyatta. By the 1920s, when Kenyatta was about 30, he became involved in the Young Kikuyu Association, only one of many nationalist organizations he would support and build. By 1929 he was also a general secretary in the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) and edited their nationalist newspaper, Muigwithania. The KCA sent him to London in an attempt to stop the British colonizers from repossessing all the Kenyan lands. Though he was unsuccessful, he again returned to England in 1931 and remained there this time for 15 years.

Much like Gandhi, Kenyatta spent his time in the Western world becoming educated and learning skills that he would bring back to Kenya. He studied at the London School of Economics and wrote his book, Facing Mount Kenya, about social and cultural life in Kenya. This groundbreaking book was one of the first about African society that an African nationalist had written describing his own society, from the viewpoint of Africans rather than foreign colonizers.

"If we unite now, each and every one of us, and each tribe to another, we will cause the implementation in this country of that which the European calls democracy. True democracy has no colour distinction. It does not choose between black and white." - Jomo Kenyatta's speech at the KAU meeting on July 26, 1952.

Returning to Kenya after World War II, Kenyatta became the glue that held the aspiring nation together as its divided organizations fought for Kenya’s independence. The president of the Kenya African Union, (KAU) he continued to draw attention to the theft of Kenyan land by colonizers and the inequality of colonial rule. With relatively peaceful marches, eloquently passionate speeches, and other protests, his organization drew more than 100,000 people - more than the entire population of the capital, Nairobi, at the time – from many main rival tribes such as the Masai, Luo, and his own Kikuyu. He encouraged Kenyans to grow as a nation and take advantage of allowances made by the colonial government for the natives to grow cash crops like coffee, which politicians fought over for a long time, rather than darker methods of inspiring change. The entire nation hailed him as a hero. And like all politicians, there were many who agreed with his policies – and many who did not.