Albert John Luthuli
Albert John Luthuli was a South African teacher and politician who fought for civil rights in South Africa.
Albert Lutuli was a South African teacher, Zulu chief, and President-General of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967. In 1960 he became the first African and the first person from outside Europe and the Americas to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was born around 1898 near Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the son of a Seventh-day Adventist mission interpreter from the Groutville mission in Natal. After his father's death the family returned to Groutville, and he was educated at the Ohlange Institute and Adams College, where he taught from 1920 to 1935. In 1936 he was elected chief of the Umvoti Mission Reserve, a position he held until the apartheid government deposed him in 1952.
He joined the ANC in 1944 and was elected its President-General in December 1952, in the wake of the Defiance Campaign against apartheid laws. He led the organization through the Freedom Charter (1955), the Treason Trial (1956–1961), and the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, advocating disciplined nonviolent resistance.
Restricted to his Groutville home for most of the years from 1953 onward, he was permitted briefly to travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1961. His autobiography Let My People Go appeared in 1962. He died on July 21, 1967, after being struck by a goods train near his home, in disputed circumstances; he was 69.
The given name Albert is of Germanic origin, from adal ("noble") and beraht ("bright"), meaning "noble and bright." It is a masculine name, and he bore it.