As more and more African students received their education from missionary schools, some of them began to question the idea that they were inherently inferior to the white colonial culture that had taken up residence around them. Even the kids at RVA at this time were able to observe the growing attitude of white supremacy. One student saw a white farmer kill one of his workers then try to defend his actions by saying, “He was just an African.”
Finally, a missionary-educated Kenyan named Harry Thuku had had enough. He began to speak out against the white colonial government as well as missionaries he felt were not doing enough to stop the oppression. In 1922 Thuku was arrested and detained without trial. Protesters began to gather by the hundreds at the Nairobi cell where he was being held. Emotions ran high and eventually got out of hand. No one knows for sure who fired the first shot, but in the end there were at least twenty-five dead with African eyewitnesses claiming hundreds were killed.
Thuku was later released in 1931; and in 1932 he became president of the Kikuyu Central Association, then Kenya’s foremost African political group. His ideals and approach went on to inform the larger struggle for political and economic independence that took Africa like wild-fire from the late 1940s to ’60s. Thuku played an important role in the evolution of African nationalism within his country.
What was AIM’s response to the Thuku uprising? Stay tuned…
