Georges nzongola ntalaja biography of barack

He became the second Black student to attend Davidson during its early efforts to diversify. And he quickly assimilated into American activism. He joined civil rights protests in Charlotte, urged the college to stop discriminating against Black employees, and advocated for a broader curriculum.

Black and white maintenance workers at the college had similar jobs but received different treatment. White workers, classified as maintenance engineers, got paid more than Black workers classified as janitors. He’d seen that dynamic in the Congo, where whites doing the same jobs as Black workers earned vastly bigger paychecks.

It shocked him.

“Here I was in America—the land of liberty, equality and justice,” he said. “And in reality, that wasn’t the case. I went to President Martin and told him that this was ridiculous and revolting and needed to stop.”

Martin agreed and said things would change. Not quickly enough: The college lost outstanding Black workers to other employers that offered better pay and treatment, Nzongola-Ntalaja said.

The budding scholar also found Davidson severely lacking in African studies.

He asked college leaders to expand course options to include Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Davidson needed “to recognize that true diversity requires going beyond the physical presence of a handful of students of African ancestry…to recognize the intellectual and cultural productions of their peoples as worthy of being integrated into the curriculum.

“I am happy to report that this message was effectively heard,” he said.

Professors asked for his help and reading recommendations as they designed an African studies course together.

Ken Childs ’66-67, his white classmate and former roommate, remembers marching with him to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They both went to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak at Johnson C. Smith University, a historic

Title:

Education:

B.A., Philosophy, Davidson College; M.A., Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky; Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Teaching and Research Interests:

Socio-political issues of Central Africa

Current Research:

Past President of the African Studies Association of the United States (ASA) and of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS), Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja is the author of several books and numerous articles on African politics, development, and conflict issues. These include Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Africa; Nation-Building and State Building in Africa; and Le Mouvement Démocratique au Zaïre, 1956-1996. He is the editor of The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities and of Conflict in the Horn of Africa, and co-editor of The State and Democracy in Africa and of The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (both the first and second editions). His major work, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History, won the 2004 Best Book Award of the African Politics Conference Group (APCG), an organization of U.S.-based political scientists specializing on Africa.

Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja retired from the AAAD faculty in 2024.

Congolese academic and diplomat (born 1944)

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (born 3 February 1944) is a Congolese academic, author, and diplomat. He is a professor of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he specialises in African and global studies. He was also the Permanent Representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the United Nations from 2022 until 2023.

Biography

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja was born on 3 February 1944 in Kasha, South Kivu in the Belgian Congo. Nzongola-Ntalaja grew up at an American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) station in Kasha, near the state post of Luputa. Nzongola-Ntalaja's involvement in activism began during his teenage years when he participated in protests that demanded Congolese independence from Belgium.

During the 1960s civil rights movement in the United States, there were calls for Davidson College to admit Black students, and Nzongola-Ntalaja was an exchange student in Minnesota at the time with plans to attend Macalester College. However, Davidson College's president, Grier Martin, contacted his host family and offered him a full scholarship. This made Nzongola-Ntalaja the second Black student to attend Davidson during its early attempts to promote diversity. He quickly became involved in American activism, participating in civil rights movement in the United States, pushing for the college to end discrimination against Black employees, and advocating for a more comprehensive curriculum.

Nzongola-Ntalaja graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1967, before completing a Master of Arts in diplomacy and international commerce in 1968 from the University of Kentucky. He later defended his Doctor of Philosophy in political science in 1975 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Academic career

Nzongola-Ntalaja had teachi

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