On February 3, 1915 John Chilembwe was executed in Mozambique. He had led an unsuccessful popular uprising in neighboring Malawi after developing a Christian millenarian philosophy in Lynchburg, Virginia at a Black theological seminary. Chilembwe had gone to America as a domestic employee of Baptist minister Joseph Booth.
Afterward, as an ordained minister in his own right, Chilembwe worked in Nyasaland (currently Malawi) where abuses by whites led to his uprising, which he expected would precipitate Christ's return. Three men were murdered on January 23, one of them by decapitation in front of his family. Chilembwe then fled to Mozambique and was killed.
