1950 – 1979

Independence & Liberation

The wave of African nations gaining independence from colonial rule, from Libya in 1951 through the "Year of Africa" in 1960 to the later liberation of Portuguese Africa and Zimbabwe.

Jan Smuts, the South African field marshal and statesman who twice served as prime minister and helped foun… (1950)
Ronald McNair, the second African-American to travel to space, who died in the 1986 Challenger disaster, wa… (1950)
Sihem Bensedrine, Tunisian journalist and human rights activist who later chaired Tunisia's Truth and Digni… (1950)
Jesse L. Brown, the U.S. Navy's first African-American naval aviator, was killed in action during the Battl… (1950)
Nana Amba Eyiaba I, Ghanaian queen mother and traditional-leadership advocate, is born. (1950)
Sahle-Work Zewde, who became the 5th President of Ethiopia and its first woman head of state, is born. (1950)
Mory Kanté, Guinean singer whose 'Yé ké yé ké' became an international hit, was born. (1950)
Joyce Banda, who became the fourth President of Malawi and the country's first female head of state, was bo… (1950)
Charles Hamilton Houston, African-American lawyer and dean of Howard University Law School whose legal stra… (1950)
South Africa's apartheid government passed the Group Areas Act, formally segregating cities and towns by ra… (1950)
Mohamed Morsi, who in 2012 became Egypt's first democratically elected president before being ousted in a c… (1951)
Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, who served as president of Nigeria from 2007 until his death in office in 2010, was bo… (1951)
Salva Kiir Mayardit, the former SPLA commander who became the first president of South Sudan upon its indep… (1951)
Libya's National Constituent Assembly adopted the country's first constitution ahead of full independence l… (1951)
Libya became independent, with Idris I proclaimed King of Libya, making it the first country to achieve ind… (1951)
Samuel Doe, who seized power and became President of Liberia, was born. (1951)
Free Officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muhammad Naguib seized power in Egypt, forcing King Farouk to a… (1952)
King Farouk of Egypt abdicated the throne in favor of his infant son Fuad II, days after the Free Officers'… (1952)
Sameera Moussa, the Egyptian nuclear physicist who championed the peaceful use of atomic energy for medical… (1952)
The United Nations ceded Eritrea to Ethiopia as an autonomous federated territory, a decision that later fu… (1952)
Jakaya Kikwete, who later served as the fourth President of Tanzania, was born. (1952)
Kenya's colonial governor declared a state of emergency and began mass arrests of suspected Mau Mau leaders… (1952)
Cyril Ramaphosa, the trade unionist and businessman who became the fifth President of South Africa, was bor… (1952)
Abayomi Wilfrid Karnga, the Liberian historian, educator, and Supreme Court justice known for his pioneerin… (1952)
Fuad II was proclaimed King of Egypt and Sudan as an infant, becoming the last monarch of Egypt before the… (1952)
Rioters burned much of downtown Cairo in an event known as 'Black Saturday', targeting British and upper-cl… (1952)
Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen of the United Kingdom while staying at Treetops Hotel in Kenya, upon the d… (1952)
Emmett Ashford becomes the first African American umpire in organized professional baseball. (1952)
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwean trade unionist and opposition leader who later became prime minister, was born. (1952)
Bola Tinubu, Nigerian politician who later became President of Nigeria, was born. (1952)
Roger Milla, the Cameroonian footballer whose exuberant corner-flag celebrations at the 1990 World Cup made… (1952)
Dambudzo Marechera, the acclaimed and unconventional Zimbabwean novelist and poet known for The House of Hu… (1952)
Olive Morris, the Jamaican-British activist who co-founded the Brixton Black Women's Group and campaigned a… (1952)
Portuguese colonial authorities and settlers massacre hundreds of native creoles in the Batepá massacre on… (1953)
Ian Khama, who became the 4th President of Botswana, is born. (1953)
Melchior Ndadaye, who became Burundi's first democratically elected and first Hutu president, was born. (1953)
Malika Oufkir, Moroccan writer whose memoir 'Stolen Lives' recounted her family's imprisonment after her fa… (1953)
Egypt was declared a republic, ending the Muhammad Ali dynasty's monarchy in the final act of the 1952 revo… (1953)
Julius Nyerere founded the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), a key step toward Tanzania's independe… (1954)
Ruby Bridges, who a year later became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school i… (1954)
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck Orléansville (now Chlef), Algeria, killing over 1,200 people and destroyi… (1954)
Mahmoud El Khatib, Egyptian footballer nicknamed 'Bibo' and regarded as one of the greatest forwards in Afr… (1954)
The National Liberation Front (FLN) launched coordinated attacks across French Algeria in an uprising known… (1954)
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military commander who later became President of Egypt, was born in Cairo. (1954)
João Lourenço, who later became the third President of Angola, was born. (1954)
South African Airways Flight 201, a de Havilland Comet jetliner, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea en rout… (1954)
Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt, becoming the country's de facto leader and later its president, r… (1954)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian economist who later became the first woman and first African to lead the… (1954)
Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan hotel manager credited with sheltering more than a thousand people during th… (1954)
The George Washington Carver National Monument was dedicated in Missouri, the first US national park named… (1955)
Iman, the Somali-born supermodel and actress who became one of the first African models to achieve global f… (1955)
Taher Elgamal, the Egyptian-American cryptographer whose ElGamal encryption scheme underpins modern digital… (1955)
FLN insurgents and armed mobs killed dozens of French settlers in and around Philippeville (now Skikda), Al… (1955)
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was abducted and lynched in Mississippi after being accused of offending a wh… (1955)
An all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam of the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Ti… (1955)
Sultan Mohammed V returned triumphantly to Morocco from exile, greeted by jubilant crowds two days before h… (1955)
Morocco marked the dawn of its independence when Sultan Mohammed V declared the end of the French protector… (1955)
Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, s… (1955)
Cyprien Ntaryamira, President of Burundi whose death in a 1994 plane crash helped ignite the Rwandan genoci… (1955)
Representatives of 29 newly independent Asian and African nations convened in Bandung, Indonesia, for the f… (1955)