Mark Huntington Higgins

Higgins is memorialized in the book entitled "Against the Current: How Albert Schweitzer Inspired a Young Man's Journey" (Oakham Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2014).

Higgins ventured from the Schweitzer Hospital following one year of assigned work, and began a land-based journey that was to take him to Israel. First, he had to cross through the Belgian Congo, which in July 1960 had just acquired independence from Belgium.

He succeeded in crossing the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo by steamboat, railway and on a commercant (commercial truck) as far as Kasongo in Kivu Province. He was detained in Kivu due to internal strife and the war of Congolese independence. Higgins was mistaken for a Belgian spy and murdered in Kasongo on July 25, 1960. Two months passed before the U.S. State Department and his family were notified of his death, which was widely reported in American media, notably with a full-page story in LIFE Magazine on October 31, 1960 ("Last Journey for an idealistic American"), and a two-column story in Time Magazine on October 31, 1960 ("The Wanted American").

Higgins died on July 25, 1960 in Kasongo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is buried in Rural Cemetery (Worcester, Massachusetts).

Mark Huntington Higgins (June 26, 1940 – July 25, 1960) was an American student employed in Lambarene, Gabon, West Africa by Albert Schweitzer from May 1959 to June 1960.