nguyen thi dinh was summoned to a meeting of southern Communist Party leaders at the end of 1959. One of the very few high-ranking women in the Communist movement, Nguyen Thi Dinh hailed from the Mekong Delta province that the Communists called Ben Tre and the Diem government called Kien Hoa. At the meeting, an official named Sau Duong announced that he had important news to share. The Party, he declared, had decided to use military action in conjunction with political action to overthrow the Diem government. The proclamation prompted an immediate and frenzied applause from the audience, who had been convinced by the setbacks of the past few years that armed action was the only possible means of defeating Diem and unifying the country. Returning to Ben Tre, Nguyen Thi Dinh gathered the province's Party leadership in a rice field on the night of January 1, 1960. Although Diem's countermeasures had left the Party with only 162 members in the entire province, the assemblage decided that they had enough experienced people to break the enemy's hold through armed rebellion. The committee therefore resolved to lead an uprising like that in 1945, with a starting date of January 17.

Beating drums and wooden bells, the guerrillas went to several villages and called on the people to revolt. The revolutionaries tore down government flags and burned the plaques on each house that listed the occupants. They chopped down trees and lay them across roads to block enemy movements.