By Lisa E. Ackers

INTRODUCTION

**John Chilembwe and John Chorley**, standing outside Chilembwe’s church in Mbombwe village in southern Malawi, Africa, 1914.
*Courtesy of Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/93505648/*)

John Chilembwe, who is considered the father of Malawian Independence, came to Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1898 to study at Virginia Theological Seminary (now known as Virginia University of Lynchburg or VUL). He arrived in the United States in 1897 with Scottish missionary Joseph Booth. Chilembwe received his early formal education through Scottish missionaries. He was then employed as a domestic worker by Joseph Booth who continued to teach him. Booth engaged Chilembwe to help create the Zambezi Industrial Mission and then took Chilembwe to America to raise money for Booth’s ministries and to help Chilembwe further his education in America. Chilembwe received an education in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was an intelligent, strong-willed man of his time who was greatly affected by the events he witnessed and the ideas he sought. He returned home to Malawi after he received his education in Lynchburg. He worked peacefully for change which did not come. Then, he fomented a rebellion.

BRIEF HISTORY OF MALAWI

Chilembwe came into the world during a turbulent period when Central Africa was rife with the European and Arab slave trade. Chilembwe was born in 1871 near Lake Malawi in the Chiradzulu District of what is now known as Malawi. Both of Chilembwe’s parents were from tribes residing in the Shire area at the southern tip of the Lake during the tribal period after the decline of the Maravi Kingdom. According to African-born Lynchburg resident, artist, and activist Ann van de Graaf’s article John Chilembwe, Arabs coerced some tribes to trap and sell members of more peaceful tribes to the enslavers. Chilembwe’s father, Kauandama, was from an enslaving Yao tribe, and his mother, Nyangu, was from an encroached upon Mang’anja tribe. East African Arab slave trading on the Indian Ocean was common in this region from the 7th century until the time of the British Protectorate according to some sources and from 2500 BCE according to others. The Colonial slave trade increased to the highest level in the mid-1800s.

**Malawi Poster created by Bill Monroe, 2021**

The earliest knowledge that we have about Malawi is that hunter-gatherers were supplanted by multiple Bantu tribes migrating south in approximately the 10th century CE. The Kingdom of Maravi was established around 1500 when the Phiri arrived from the Congo. Maravi lasted from 1500 to approximately 1700 or 1800 depending on the source. There is some dispute as to whether the Phiri or the Bantu established Maravi. After the Kingdom ended, the area devolved into tribal groups of mostly disparate Bantu tribes. The British Central Africa Protectorate was proclaimed in 1889 when the British annexed Lake Nyasa (Malawi) and formally established in 1891 when the British removed the enslavers. The British Colonial Protectorate of Nyasaland was established in 1907. Malawi became an independent country in 1964.

CHILEMBWE CHARACTER AND EDUCATION

Chilembwe lived in an extraordinary time when there was great violence and great new ideas on the continent of Africa and in America. Although Chilembwe was young when he met Booth, it would be wrong to assume that he was pliable or an empty vessel. Joseph Booth’s daughter described Chilembwe’s character as “the product of a strong and aggressive race [the Yao] who knew what they wanted and went after it. He knew his mind and was not easily turned from his purpose.” John Chilembwe’s early education was through Scottish missionaries in a school. Subsequently, his informal and experiential education started in Malawi when he worked to help Booth establish the Zambezi Industrial Mission. The mission aimed to provide Nyasaland (Malawian) African converts to Christianity with the educational, technical, and economic skills they needed to lead the development of their country towards independence. Chilembwe’s mentor Joseph Booth was a hardworking Presbyterian missionary who was considered a radical in his time for writing a book called Africa for Africans. His book was anti-colonial and supported the ideas of not only African independence from colonial rule but also African economic development. He manifested teaching these ideas through his Zambezi Industrial Mission.

Professor Lindsay Michie of the University of Lynchburg believes that Chilembwe was influenced by a broader group of African and African American intellectuals and movements at the beginning of the Jim Crow era. Booth and Chilembwe also made contact with John L. Dube, the leader of the Native Representative Council of South Africa, a precursor to the African National Congress.

In the United States Chilembwe became aware that the expectations of African Americans were not met after the Civil War and Emancipation and that they faced widespread persecution and violence. Chilembwe later wrote of his experiences in Richmond, Virginia, when he was walking among educated Black ministers. Mobs of young white men followed them and stoned them for walking together, sitting together, or living in the same house.

During this time, Booth and Chilembwe also met Dr. Lewis Jordan, who introduced them to the National Baptist Convention and took them to Roanoke, Virginia, where they met Rev. Dr. Willis W. Brown, the first full-time pastor of High Street Baptist Church in 1897. Dr. Brown suggested that Chilembwe further his education at Virginia Theological Seminary in Lynchburg. The National Baptist Convention and High Street Baptist Church paid his tuition. Today the school is the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) known as the Virginia University of Lynchburg.

After arriving in Lynchburg in 1898 at the age of 27, Chilembwe studied at Virginia Theological Seminary under President Dr. Gregory Willis Hayes. A connection between Lynchburg and Malawi was made through shared ideas of missionary work, material aid, and theology. John Chilembwe received kindness and support in his educational pursuits. He attended Virginia Theological Seminary at the same time as the future poet and civil rights activist Anne Spencer. Seminary students like Chilembwe and Spencer were shaped by Hayes’s belief in self-help to overcome the tenets of oppression.

During his time there, Chilembwe joined the Seminary’s African Development Society, which was founded by President Hayes. Chilembwe’s name is on the letterhead of a document advocating Joseph Booth’s ideas of establishing a mission in order to set up a corporation that would sell shares and purchase land in Central Africa. The land would then be used for economic development for Africans and allow African Americans to repatriate there if they desired. Although some scholars contend that Dr. Hayes would have been too busy to have engaged much with Chilembwe, Rev. Dr. James Coleman of the Virginia University of Lynchburg believes that he did. Chilembwe’s perspective, to a large extent, reflects this engagement although he clearly had other influences. Later, Dr. Hayes’s philosophy also influenced Seminary student Vernon Johns, who in turn, mentored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

**Chilembwe’s Providence Industrial Mission with parishioners**, January 24, 1914. Chilembwe is pictured on the far left.

THE REBELLION

Chilembwe returned to his home territory (now known as Malawi) in 1900. He married and started the Providence Industrial Mission, which still exists today. Chilembwe was the pastor of this mission. It is not known if he received a divinity degree in Virginia or abroad, although he studied at Virginia Theological Seminary. After his return, he became dissatisfied with the pace of change. A major source of this dissatisfaction came from the A.L. Bruce Plantation where the foreman, William Jervis Livingstone, could not be dissuaded from maltreatment of the African workers, and even burned down their church several times. His burning of Chilembwe’s church, the last time in 1913, established a great enmity in Chilembwe. Though Livingstone was given a formal citation by legal authorities, the colonial government was not interested in pushing the issue further. There were other indignities, some resulting from a greater need for labor with the onset of World War I, which was fought in Africa as well as Europe. The frustration that the people felt and the lack of solution caused Chilembwe to incite an uprising for change in 1915, despite knowing he would likely perish. At a meeting before the rebellion, he said, “Let’s strike a blow and die,” echoing the words of John Brown before the Harper’s Ferry Raid in 1859 that led to the American Civil War.

On January 23, 1915, inspired by Chilembwe’s words, rebellions were incited at four sites: Blantyre, Limbe, and the A.L. Bruce Plantations at Magomero and Mwanje. Rebels went to Blantyre and Limbe to capture rifles and ammunition held there by the African Lakes Company, and another group went to the A.L. Bruce Plantation at Magomero. One group attacked the plantation house and another attacked a plantation-owned village of Mwanje where there were two white households. At the plantation house, Livingstone was killed and his wife and children were taken captive. A planter living nearby, Duncan MacCormick, came to assist and was killed. The third house was occupied by women and children at the time of the attack. They were captured and taken hostage and some of the caches of weapons held there by a local rifle club were taken. Mwanje did not hold military value but Chilembwe’s men believed there were weapons there. Rebels badly injured the station manager John Robertson, but he and his wife managed to escape through the cotton fields. They killed Ferguson, a plantation stock manager. Two other residents escaped through the cotton fields to raise the alarm at another property six miles away.

Rebels cut the telephone lines between Zombe and Tete and between Blantyre and Lilongwe, which delayed news that this rebellion had started. So on January 24, 100 rebels raided the weapons store at the African Lakes Company, which did alert the authorities, but they managed to get away with some rifles. Although Chilembwe was the intellectual and spiritual head of the rebellion, he was also a Christian pastor and remained in Mbombwe praying instead of participating in the violence.

By January 24, 1915, the government had activated the First Battalion of the Settler’s Militia and the King’s African Rifles (KAR) in the north of the country to end the rebellion. KAR launched a failed attack on Chilembwe’s forces in Mbombwe on January 25. On January 26 rebels attacked a Catholic mission at Nguludi, killing the guards, injuring the priest, and burning down the church. Militia forces attacked Mbombwe again and took over as most of the rebels had fled towards the eastern Portuguese territory now known as Mozambique, with the intent of heading north towards German-occupied Africa during the World War I conflict.

THE AFTERMATH

**Supporters of John Chilembwe being led into captivity, c.1915.**
*Courtesy of Malawi National Archives (*from *“Hearing voices from the Chilembwe Rising,” by John McCracken)*

Mbombwe fell and government troops blew up Chilembwe’s church effectively ending the rebellion. Three hundred rebels were caught and imprisoned. Forty rebels were executed. Thirty rebels evaded capture and settled in what is now Mozambique. Chilembwe was killed by soldiers while attempting to cross into that territory. He was fatally shot on February 3 near Mlanje and buried in a secret grave to prevent it from becoming a shrine. Twelve days had passed from the onset of the rebellion until his death. Although it was by no means the largest rebellion in Africa, it was significant and there were numerous government inquiries and speculation of the possible spread of insurgency. The British Official Commission asserted that the main cause of the revolt had been Chilembwe’s education in the United States.

CONCLUSION

**Providence Industrial Mission destroyed**, c. 1915

Despite these efforts to overcome colonialism in 1915, Malawi did not gain independence from Great Britain until 1964. The movement went underground for almost 50 years according to Rev. Dr. John Gondawe of Mzuzu, Malawi. Forty-nine years after Chilembwe’s rebellion, Dr. Hastings Banda became the first President of Malawi. However, John Chilembwe is considered the father of Malawian Independence and is celebrated every January 15. He is also the face of the Malawian currency, the Kwacha. In Malawi, many people know of Lynchburg, Virginia, because of John Chilembwe.

The Rev. Dr. John Gondwe of Mzuzu, Malawi, believes the time Chilembwe spent in America and in Lynchburg was important to his personal development and the development of his ideas of independence and equality and the characteristic of self-sufficiency. Although the ideas may have seemed radical to proponents of colonialism and possibly to some here, they are the same ideas that inspired the colonies of Britain to break free and become the United States of America.

CHILEMBWE’S CONTINUING INTERNATIONAL IMPACT

John Chilembwe’s initial education was with Scottish missionaries. The Scotland Malawi Partnership (SMP) announced on July 5, 2021, that a sculpture of Chilembwe won the popular vote in a contest and will be placed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, England, for a period of two years starting in September 2022. The artist, Professor Samson Kambalu, is a Malawian who currently resides in the UK, and is married to a Scottish woman. Professor Kambalu is a Fellow at Magdalen College of Oxford and a Professor at the Ruskin School of Fine Art at Oxford. His sculpture, “The Antelope” reimagines a photograph of Chilembwe and John Chorley that is thought to be the last image of Chilembwe taken before his death. As Kambalu is part of the “Situationist” art movement, he repositions Chilembwe and Chorley facing away from each other. In his sculpture, Chilembwe is much larger and wears a hat, which would have been illegal at the time.

Kambalu’s sculpture will be placed in Trafalgar Square with Admiral Nelson’s Column and statues of General Sir Charles James Napier, Major General Sir Henry Havelock, and King George IV on the other three plinths. This sculpture has been exhibited in Lisbon, Portugal, at the “Fracture Empire” exhibit in the Culturgest art space.

The Scottish Malawi Partnership heavily advocated for the choice of “The Antelope” for the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square. SMP Chief David Hope Jones stated,

“It is a powerful, practical and constructive expression of all we have been talking about around Black Lives Matter, for an inspiring Malawian artist to be commissioned to make an inspiring statue of an inspiring Malawian freedom fighter which will sit alongside, and size up to, the many expressions of imperial power in the heart of London.”

He also noted that many Scottish authors have written about John Chilembwe to try to address the wrongs of colonialism and said that Professor Kambalu and his wife had found inspiration and comfort in their words.

CURRENT LYNCHBURG MALAWI CONNECTIONS

**Dr. Harold Riley and Lynchburg members of First Presbyterian Church** in Kalikumbi with members of the Lynchburg Prayer House, photo taken 2017
*Courtesy of Lisa E. Ackers*

Lynchburg has another connection with Malawi that does not originate with John Chilembwe but keeps his memory alive in Hill City. This connection was started by Dr. Harold Riley (deceased) who first traveled to Nigeria on a medical mission in the 1970s. His family were missionaries there two generations earlier. Dr. Riley and his wife Barbara subsequently went to the Congo as missionaries. He became interested in Malawi because of the great need and the warm character of the people and felt even more of a connection when he found out about John Chilembwe. For over 20 years Dr. Riley led medical missions from Lynchburg to Malawi with First Presbyterian Church.

Lynchburg’s First Presbyterian Church continues to maintain those relationships today with Presbyterian churches in the Malawi towns of Embangweni, Kalikumbi, and Mzuzu. Several pastors and parishioners from Lynchburg have been to Malawi to provide help with teaching, counseling, engineering endeavors, and supplying medicine and temporary doctors and surgeons. They have also provided funds for repairs and further training for needed professionals there. Some Malawian friends have traveled to Lynchburg in return. Rev. Dr. Gondwe and his wife Florence traveled to Lynchburg from Malawi in 2006. Rev. Dr. John Gondwe returned in February 2018. Dr. Kondwani Zgambo and his wife Rita of Embangweni visited the US including Lynchburg in July and August 2018. They visited the Virginia University of Lynchburg, Anne Spencer’s house, First Presbyterian Church, and other Lynchburg sites.

A Virginia historical highway marker explaining the life of John Chilembwe was added to the campus of the Virginia University of Lynchburg in 2020. His Excellency Ambassador Edward Yakobe Sawerengera of Malawi was present for the unveiling ceremony, along with his First Secretary Alinafe Chikonde. Shaun Spencer Hester, Anne Spencer’s granddaughter, was present at the ceremony, as well as Dr. Lindsay Michie and Lynchburg Mayor MaryJane Dolan. Ambassador Sawerengera is quoted as saying:

“This is no mere achievement for a man who lived over 100 years ago. The people of the United States of America must be thanked because they’re the ones that provided the knowledge and also the training because it was here where Chilembwe started. And when he went back he was not the same journeyman who came from that part of Africa and he was able to challenge [the colonial government].”

**Dignitaries at the dedication of the Chilembwe marker, November 14, 2020, with Hayes Hall in the background.** Left to right are Treney Tweedy, Vice Mayor of Lynchburg; Alison Morrison-Shetlar, President of University of Lynchburg; His Excellency Edward Yakobe Sawerengera, Ambassador of Malawi; MaryJane Dolan, Mayor of Lynchburg; unknown; University of Lynchburg student who researched the marker text; Dr. Lindsay Michie, Professor at University of Lynchburg and marker sponsor; Rev. James Coleman, Professor at Virginia University of Lynchburg
*Photograph by Ted Delaney*

**Virginia Historical Highway Marker for John Chilembwe** on the campus of Virginia University of Lynchburg, pictured at the unveiling ceremony on November 14, 2020.
*Photograph by Ted Delaney*

Extensive Sources Available Upon Request

Special thanks to David Stuart-Mogg for providing historical images and additional information about Chilembwe. Stuart-Mogg was Editor of the Society of Malawi Journal.

John Chilembwe, the Lynchburg Student Who Became the Father of Independence of the African Country of Malawi