Editing Laurent Gbagbo (section)

== Early life and academic career ==
Laurent Gbagbo was born on 31 May 1945 to a [[Catholic Church in Ivory Coast|Roman Catholic]] family of the [[Bété people]] in<!-- the village of Mama, near  --> [[Gagnoa]] in the then [[French West Africa]].<ref>{{Citation|url = https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurent-Gbagbo |title= Laurent Gbagbo|year = 2020|publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica}}</ref> He became a history professor and an opponent of the regime of President [[Félix Houphouët-Boigny]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Noble |first=Kenneth B. |last2=Times |first2=Special To the New York |date=1990-10-30 |title=President Leads in Ivory Coast Election |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/30/world/president-leads-in-ivory-coast-election.html |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> He was imprisoned from 31 March 1971 to January 1973. In 1979, he obtained his doctorate at [[Paris Diderot University]]. In 1980, he became Director of the Institute of History, Art, and African Archeology at the [[University of Abidjan]]. He participated in a 1982 teachers' strike as a member of the National Trade Union of Research and Higher Education. Gbagbo went into exile in France.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OelF9LrRXHsC&pg=PA65|title=African Leaders: Guiding the New Millennium|last=Rake|first=Alan|author-link=Alan Rake|date=2001|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=9780810840195|pages=65–69|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pzPECwAAQBAJ&pg=PA104|title=From Lumumba to Gbagbo: Africa in the Eddy of the Euro-American Quest for Exceptionalism|last=Frindethie|first=K. Martial|date=25 January 2016|publisher=McFarland|isbn=9780786494040|pages=86–126|language=en}}</ref>