Outside Leopoldville's ugly new Palace of Culture, a mob of his countrymen waited for Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba to arrive for the opening of the Congo's much-heralded African "summit" conference. As Lumumba drove up elegantly in an open Lincoln Continental once reserved for Belgium's King Baudouin, the crowd suddenly hoisted signs reading "Fascist"' and "Dictator," burst into the distinctive "whoop, whoop, whoop" that is the Congolese version of a boo. Seemingly undismayed by their jeers —and by the fact that his summit conference had attracted mainly minor bureaucrats instead of the...
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