Ahmed Sékou Touré

Touré was born in Faranah, French Guinea, to a Mandinka Muslim family, the great-grandson of Samori Ture, the Muslim Mandinka ruler who founded the Wassoulou Empire and resisted French colonisation until his capture in 1898. ^{1 2} He attended the Qur'anic school in his hometown and then a French school in Kankan, and was expelled from technical college in Conakry in 1936 for leading a student protest. ¹ Working as a postal clerk, he founded French Guinea's first trade union in 1945 and led the 71-day general strike of 1953 that forced France to apply a new overseas labour code. ¹

Touré led the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), the Guinean section of the African Democratic Rally, and in the September 1958 referendum Guinea alone rejected de Gaulle's constitution, becoming independent forthwith on 2 October 1958 with Touré as its first president. ^{1 2} In 1960 he declared the PDG the only legal party and ruled from then on as a virtual dictator, re-elected unopposed to four seven-year terms; his rule is associated above all with the Camp Boiro detention camp, where many were killed. ¹ Abroad he kept Guinea neutral between the blocs and supported African independence movements; the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation mandated him to mediate in the Iran–Iraq war, without success. ²

Touré died of an apparent heart attack on 26 March 1984 at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, while undergoing cardiac treatment, having been rushed to the United States after being stricken in Saudi Arabia the previous day. ^{1 3}

Two texts attest Touré's Muslim identity personally: the English article calls him a devout Muslim, and the French article states that he was of the Muslim confession and first attended the Qur'anic school; the Arabic article records his birth to a Muslim family and his Qur'anic schooling. ^{1 4 2} No source names a school or branch for him, so the museum records his faith as unknown and preserves the attestations in the data file.

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.