John Chilembwe
John Nkologo Chilembwe (June 1871 – 3 February 1915) was a Baptist pastor, educator and revolutionary who trained as a minister in the United States, returning to Nyasaland in 1901. He was an early figure in the resistance to colonialism in Nyasaland (Malawi), opposing both the treatment of Africans working in agriculture on European-owned plantations and the colonial government's failure to promote the social and political advancement of Africans. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Chilembwe organised an unsuccessful armed uprising against colonial rule. Today, Chilembwe is celebrated as a hero of independence, and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January in Malawi. Early life There is limited information about John Chilembwe's parentage and birth. An American pamphlet of 1914 claimed that John Chilembwe was born in Sangano, Chiradzulu District, in the south of what became Nyasaland, in June 1871. Joseph Booth also stated that Chilembwe's father was a Yao and his mother a Mang'anja slave, captured in warfare. This information was contemporary; in the 1990s, John Chilembwe's granddaughter stated that Chilembwe's father may have been called Kaundama, and was one of those who settled at Mangochi Hill during the Yao infiltration into Mang'anja territory, and that his mother may have been called Nyangu: his likely pre-baptismal name was Nkologo. However, other also quite recent sources give differing parental names. Chilembwe attended a Church of Scotland mission from around 1890. Influence of Joseph Booth In 1892 he became a house servant of Joseph Booth, a radical and independent-minded missionary. Booth had arrived in Africa in 1892 as a Baptist to establish the Zambezi Industrial Mission near Blantyre. Booth was critical of the reluctance of Scottish Presbyterian missions to admit Africans as full church members, and later founded seven more independent missions in Nyasaland which, like the Zambezi Industrial Mission(Potts), focused on the equality of all worshippers. In Booth's household and mission, where he was closely associated with Booth, Chilembwe became acquainted with Booth's radical religious ideas and egalitarian feelings. Booth left Nyasaland with Chilembwe in 1897; he returned to Nyasaland alone in 1899 but left permanently in 1902, although he continued to correspond with Chilembwe. After 1906, Booth was strongly influenced by Millennialism, but the extent to which he retained influence over Chilembwe after 1902 or influenced him towards millennial beliefs is disputed, although Booth later strongly influenced Elliot Kenan Kamwana, the first leader of the Watchtower followers of Charles Taze Russell in Nyasaland. Education in the United States and relations with American and African Independent Churches In 1897 Booth and Chilembwe traveled together to the United States. Because of the difficulties the two encountered when traveling together in the United States, Booth introduced Chilembwe to the Reverend Lewis G Gordon, Foreign Missions Secretary of the National Baptist Convention, who arranged for the latter to attend the Virginia Theological Seminary and College (now Virginia University of Lynchburg), a small Baptist institution at Lynchburg, Virginia where he almost certainly studied African-American history. The principal was a