This Day in African History — Beginning of the Mau Mau Rebellion

Information filters back to Kenyan authorities during late August 1951 about secret meetings being held in the forests outside Nairobi. A secret society called the Mau Mau, believed to have been started sometime in the previous year, requires its members to take an oath to drive the white man from Kenya. Intelligence suggests that membership of the Mau Mau was restricted to members of the Kikuyu tribe, many of whom had been arrested during burglaries in Nairobi's white suburbs.