Celebrating the Under Appreciated During Black History Month
Black History Month is being celebrated across the United States and even in some other countries around the world. This year, as you are learning more about Black history and celebrating the contributions of all people of African descent to society, we wanted to take the time to highlight some prominent African leaders who may not get as much time in the spotlight.
Chinua Achebe
(Photo by Michel Delsol/Getty Images)
Writer Chinua Achebe was born in the village of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria. At the age of eight, Achebe began to learn English and by the time he was 14 years old, he was one of a few boys selected to attend the government college at Umuahia, one of the best schools in west Africa. In 1948, Achebe enrolled at University College, Ibadan, which was a new school affiliated with the University of London. While at school, he contributed stories, essays, and sketches to the University Herald; these pieces were collected in Girls at War and Other Stories. After he graduated in 1953, Achebe decided to make writing his life’s work. His goal was to effectively and realistically communicate the stories of the African people, particularly the Igbo civilization.
In 1957, he went to London to attend the staff school of the British Broadcasting Corporation where one of his teachers was novelist and literary critic, Gilbert Phelps. Phelps recommended Achebe's work for publication and a year later, Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) appeared. To date it has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into 57 different languages. It presents an account of colonial history from the point of view of the colonized. Achebe’s two follow-up novels to Things Fall Apart—No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964)—continued the story the first novel began. Together, these three novels span precolonial Africa to colonial times to the days before Nigeria’s independence from Britain. Achebe is regarded as the most dominant and influential writers of modern African literature and has been called the "father of African literature", the "founding father of African literature", and the "'father of the African novel in English". He died in Boston in 2013.
Lupita Nyong’o
Lupita Amondi Nyong'o was born March 1, 1983, in Mexico City, Mexico, to Kenyan parents, Dorothy Ogada Buyu and Peter Anyang' Nyong'o. She was raised in Kenya but, at age 16, her parents sent her back to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. She studied film at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and, after working as a production assistant on several films, graduated from the Yale School of Drama's acting program. Soon after her graduation, she had her first feature film role as Patsey in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which she received critical acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is the first Mexican actress to win an Academy Award. Nyong'o's career progressed with her role as Nakia in the superhero film Black Panther (2018) and her starring role in Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed horror film Us (2019).
Aside from acting, Nyong'o supports historic preservation and is vocal about preventing sexual harassment and working for women's and animal rights. In 2014, she was named the most beautiful woman by People. In 2019, Nyong'o wrote a children's book named Sulwe, which became a number-one New York Times Best-Seller. In 2020, Nyong'o was named one of Africa's "50 Most Powerful Women" by Forbes. Lupita’s beauty and determination is what has made her a household name, especially with musicians such as Nicki Minaj and Beyonce.
Dikembe Mutombo
Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo (born June 25, 1966) is a Congolese American former professional basketball player. He began his career with the Georgetown Hoyas in 1988 and was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the first round in 1991. Mutombo is commonly regarded as one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time, winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times; he was also an eight-time All-Star. On January 10, 2007, he surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the second most prolific shot blocker in NBA history, behind only Hakeem Olajuwon, and he averaged a double-double for most of his career.
A well-known humanitarian, Mutombo started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997 by opening a $29 million, 300-bed hospital. When it opened in 2007, the $29 million facility became the first modern medical facility to be built in that area in nearly 40 years. In 2012, the Mutombo Foundation, in partnership with Mutombo's alma mater, Georgetown University, began a new initiative that aims to provide care for visually impaired children from low-income families in the Washington, D.C. region. In 2020, the foundation began construction of a modern pre-K through 6th grade school outside the city of Mbuji-Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He opened the door for many other basketball players from the continent to play in the NBA such as recent Finals MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer born in Enugu in 1977. She grew up on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father was a professor and her mother was the first female Registrar. She studied medicine for a year at Nsukka and then left for the U.S. at the age of 19 to continue her education on a different path. She ended up graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Communication and Political Science, a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University, and a Master of Arts degree in African History from Yale University.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize. Her 2013 novel Americanah won the US National Book Critic's Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. What she is most known for however, is her two landmark TED talks: her 2009 TED Talk: “The Danger of A Single Story” and her 2012 TEDx Euston Talk: “We Should All Be Feminists,” which started a worldwide conversation about feminism and was published as a book in 2014. She advocated for a greater understanding of stories because people are complex, saying that by understanding only a single story, one misinterprets people, their backgrounds, and their histories. The talk has become one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time with over 27 million views. Both TED Talks can be found below:
Without the courage and authenticity of these people, and so many others unseen in the spotlight, what we know and love about society today would not be possible. They have opened the doors for so many more people of African descent to walk through and continue to change our world for the better.