Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam (born 1937) became the head of state of Ethiopia and chairman of the ruling military government (the Derg) after a 1974 revolution deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. He was also the head of the central committee of Ethiopia's Socialist Workers Party. Mengistu resigned as head of state in 1991 and fled into exile in Zimbabwe.

There are few details available on the early life of Mengistu. He was born in 1937 in the southern Ethiopian district of Walayta. His father was a soldier and his mother a servant. Some accounts of his youth maintain that at a young age he moved to Addis Ababa with his mother and grew up in the household of a prominent nobleman Ras Kebbede Tesemma.

Rose to Position of Power

As a young man Mengistu joined the army and served as a private before attending Ethiopia's Holeta Military Academy. He graduated in 1966 with...