Ho Chi Minh

(1890 - 1969)

Ho Chi Minh drafted the Vietnamese declaration of independence in 1945—beginning it with a quotation from the American declaration—and held the post of president of the country for the next twenty-four years. The Geneva Accords of 1954 divided Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel, and Ho maintained control of the north. Less than two months before his death in September 1969, he declared, “The U.S. imperialist aggressors are doomed to defeat!”