Lumumba : Prime Minister of Congo

Patrice Emery Lumumba was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo after he helped Congo win it's independence from Belgium in June of 1960. Less than ten weeks later, he was overthrown, captured, and murdered. There were two key events that led to the coup against him: The first was a few days after taking office, he raised the salaries of all government employees except the military, which resulted in riots and rebellion by the military. The second was the independence of the province of Katanga, which Lumumba tried to subdue with Soviet and U.N. troops.


Despite protection provided by U.N. troops, a coup was staged, planned by a military colonel, Joseph Mobutu, and the C.I.A. (it is possible that orders came from President Eisenhower). He was captured, and even though the Soviets tried to pass resolutions in the U.N. to save him, Lumumba was ultimately shot, along with two comrades from the government, by a firing squad (Wikipedia).







This video is almost ten minutes long, but it has more detailed information than I would ever be able to find, and clips from speeches:








The first half of this short newsreel is about Lumumba's capture and unknown status, between the time he was captured and killed:








And his famous "tears, fire, and blood" speech - the first couple minutes are in French and just an introduction, and then the speech is read by another person. If you don't want to listen to it, the words of the speech are in the "info" section of the video.









And an interesting comment underneath a video:


"Il devrait avoir une rue/boulevard/avenue 'LUMUMBA' dans chaque ville de France."
("There should be a street named 'LUMUMBA' in each city in France.")