Ahmed Ben Bella

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In 1936, Gaston Revel entered the École Normale in Algiers, where he was supposed to learn how to "educate the native." It was also during this time that he began to take an interest in politics: he was drawn to the Popular Front, then to Spanish anarchism, and finally to communism. From 1940 to 1955, he taught in Algeria, first in rural areas, then in Bejaia. He returned to Europe because of the war and landed in Provence in September 1914, following the Allied advance. It was in Bejaia, in 1945, that he became fully committed to the Algerian Communist Party: in 1953, he ran for municipal office in the second electoral district (reserved for Algerians) and sat alongside the Muslims. In 1955, at the beginning of the war, he was forced to leave Algeria against his will. But, like thousands of other "red feet," he returned there in 1962 and resumed his teaching career. From all those years, he left a complete and deeply committed record, many letters, notebooks, and newspaper articles.

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Explore the Kennedy family's rise to power and how personal relationships within the Kennedy dynasty shaped national and global events from the Cold War to the Wall Street crash.

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From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, independent Algeria provided significant support to anti-colonial movements and revolutionaries worldwide. Successive presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella and then Houari Boumédiène, made Algiers a haven for activists fighting against colonial and racial oppression. Algiers the White became Algiers the Red. The internationalist Che Guevara established his base of operations there for his guerrilla activities in Africa. The African-American leader Eldridge Cleaver made it the international headquarters of the Black Panther Party. During this period, Algiers was known as "The Mecca of Revolutionaries."

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