and slavery. His efforts managed to unite diverse ethnic groups to join the resistance against the French. He was named "Mpodol Ion", which meant speaker of the nation or spokesman in the native language of the people of Bassa. His friends called him Mpodol, which meant "prophet", due to the belief that it was a biblical mandate for him to lead and speak as their prophet. In September 1945, settlers opened fire in Douala on a strike demonstration that eventually turned into a riot. According to the colonial authorities, the official death toll was 8 (and 20 wounded), However this count has been disputed. The ensuing repression against the USCC and its leaders led a new generation of activists to take over the leadership with Um Nyobè becoming general secretary of the union in 1947. The second major event is the creation of the African Democratic Rally. Um Nyobè was present in Bamako in September 1946 for the first party congress as a representative of the USCC. Back in Cameroon, he worked to create a Cameroonian party following this dynamic, which led to the founding of the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) by USCC trade unionists on the night of 10 April 1948 in a café-bar in Douala. If he was not present at the time of the foundation, he was nevertheless propelled to the head in November 1948. Umism or the legacy of Ruben Um Nyobé With overt political activism and leadership largely dormant, Um Nyobé emerged from the freedom fighter stance to fill the void of national liberation organizations that were tracked by the French imperialism in Africa. Nyobé's idea was that Cameroon needed a ‘revolution of the mind’, allowing oppressed indigenous Cameroonians to overcome their fear of Europeans. This stance is called Umism, a derivation of the name Um and is expressed by the fact that a potential leader must always place himself as the people's prosecutor. The umiste is first of all nationalist and pan-Africanist animated by a will to plead all the popular demands as well social, cultural and economic aspirations of the voiceless and the poor. Engagement in the UPC In 1952 the UPC created the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women, in particular to combat discrimination specific to women, and a youth organization in 1954, the Jeunesse démocratique du Cameroun. Um Nyobé particularly insisted on "efforts to raise the ideological level of militants