William X. Scheinman, seated second from right, with Tom Mboya, third from right in Accra Ghana in 1958. (William X. Scheinman Papers, Hoover Institution Archives)
The Hoover Institution Library and Archives have opened the papers of William X. Scheinman (1927–1999), a longtime friend of and correspondent with Kenyan independence leader Tom Mboya, who served in the first cabinet of Kenya after that East African nation achieved independence from Great Britain in 1963. The highlight of the collection is the rich correspondence between Scheinman and Mboya, which contains hundreds of letters, beginning in 1957 and ending with Mboya’s assassination in 1969.
As president of the African American Students Foundation, Scheinman was instrumental in funding the educations of hundreds of Kenyan students, including President Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr.
In addition to the Mboya correspondence, the Scheinman papers contain records of the African American Students Foundation, documenting fund-raising efforts, led by such personalities as Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Jackie Robinson, and records of the foundation’s various activities from 1959 to 1963. Also included are extensive correspondence files that record Scheinman’s long-standing interest in Africa, as seen in letters to and from African political and cultural leaders such as Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi, Zimbabwean independence leader Joshua Nkomo, longtime Zambia president Kenneth Kaunda, and Malawian independence leaders Henry Chipembere and M.W. Kanyama Chiume, as well as South African singer and human rights activist Miriam Makeba.
