Renowned US filmmaker Anthony "Amp" Elmore has launched a special project aimed at honouring Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya famously known as Tom Mboya who was gunned down on July 5, 1969, along the government road which is now known as Moi Avenue.
Elmore, who became America's first filmmaker to produce a kickboxing feature film, revealed that Tom Mboya who was a minister in Kenya's government permanently changed US history.
The filmmaker who is seeking to build the Tom Mboya/Dr. Martin Luther King Education and Culture Center in Kenya, noted that the late US President John F Kennedy capitalised on his friendship with the Kenyan leader who was assassinated to win polls.
Elmore explained that Tom Mboya convinced Kennedy to sponsor black students to the US. He followed his advice which helped him win a majority of black voters.
According to the filmmaker, President Kennedy also used his picture alongside that of Mboya to convince Black Americans to vote for him in the 1960 Presidential Elections.
The strategy which Tom Mboya partly devised, helped JFK to defeat incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee.
Defending the need to launch the project in Kenya, Elmore further argued that Tom Mboya's efforts further helped Barrack Obama to become the first black president in the history of the US.
"We in America have no idea that the Kenyan Tom Mboya efforts lead to not only to Kennedy getting elected U.S. President in 1960. If there was no Mboya, America never would have had an Obama. America's 1st Black President," he explained.
Elmore is thus lobbying Kenya to honor President John F. Kennedy
Elmore notes that Tom Mboya/Dr. Martin Luther King Education and culture center will bring together and awaken a culture like the Kennedy era of positive programs like the Peace corps.
The center will highlight the new America of the Kennedy era where a White man named William X Scheinman assisted Tom Mboya in starting Airlift America program.
On that fateful afternoon on Saturday, July 5, 1969, Tom Mboya was within Nairobi's downtown and stepped into Chhani's Pharmacy. As he left, an assassin opened fire and escaped in the ensuing confusion.
The Former Minister became the architect of the independent constitution. Tom Mboya's other achievements include eloquently pleading for a Marshall Plan for All Africa to create an African economy.
He worked with both John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King to create education opportunities for African students. Beneficiaries of his deal with US Presidents include the late noble peace prize winner Wangari Maathai and Barrack Obama Senior.
He was the first Kenyan to be featured by Time Magazine on their front page.
