Professor Wangari Mathai and fellow airlift beneficiaries after arriving in the USA in 1960.
The beneficiaries arrived in two planes and were part of 295 students sponsored by the Kennedy family foundation.
On that same day, as a sign of appreciation, Samuel Ayany the students' leader delivered a traditional stool to Kennedy from Mboya.
Professor Wangari wrote about this in details in her book Unbowed. She exprienced jim crow segregation in midwest. They had sent male students to buy them soft drinks in a store but the white clerk asked the African students to use a back door to the store as the front one was whites only.
