From Nicholas W. Raballa
Author: Raballa, Nicholas W.
Date: January 30, 1962
Location: Westport, Conn.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Student movements
Details
Appreciative of King’s continued financial support of his education at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, Kenyan student Raballa regrets missing King’s appearance at a local high school.1 He also updates King on the political situation in Kenya, expressing hope that the tension between leaders Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya “will subside to a peaceful and promising settlement.”2
Rev. M. L. King.
The Ebenezer Baptist Church
Atlanta Georgia
Dear Rev. King.
This is to acknowledge with much thanks the receipt of $50 check sent to me from your office. It is unfortunate, I was not able to meet you the last time you spoke in Bridgeport. The time you spoke I was doing a test and I made several telephone calls to contanct you in the hall but all in vain.
Some friends of mine undergoing special training at Princenton University Graduate School are anxious to meet you. I gave your address to one of them, Mr. Abraham Wabuti, who is assistant secretary to the Treasury in Kenya, to write to you directly on their behalf and explore with you their interests.
Back home things are not getting on well. There is slim hope that neither Kenyatta nor Mboya—both of whom are now tied up in an intense struggle to oust each other, will be the man to be. Whatever the case, I do hope that all will subside to a peaceeful and promising settlement.
Hoping to write again
Yours sincerely
[signed] NW Raballa
1. A month earlier, Raballa wrote King asking for money, stating that “I have exhausted the $50 you sent last including my savings from earnings in summer” (Raballa to King, 20 December 1961, p. 355 in this volume). King spoke at Central High School in Bridgeport on 15 January 1962. The event was jointly sponsored by the local Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the NAACP of Bridgeport and the Vicinity.
2. Kenyan president Kenyatta and African trade unionist and nationalist Mboya were active in the Kenyan independence movement. Early in their careers they worked closely together in the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the colony’s first black-majority party, but Mboya became an outspoken critic of corruption in Kenyatta’s government; and Kenyatta was rumored to have been involved in an assassination plot against Mboya. In May 1959 King and SCLC honored Mboya at an “Africa Freedom Dinner” (King, Remarks Delivered at Africa Freedom Dinner at Atlanta University, 13 May 1959, in Papers 5:203–204).
Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.