Learn German: Der Minister wusste, dass die Mehrheit der armen Bürger wütend wurde. - The minister knew that the majority of the poor citizens became angry.

In this sentence, der armen Bürger means "of the poor citizens", which requires the Genitive case. The plural definite article in the Genitive case is der. When an adjective follows a definite article in the Genitive case, it takes the ending -en. Therefore, the adjective arm becomes armen.

Does die Mehrheit always take a singular verb, even though it refers to many citizens?

Yes. Even though die Mehrheit (the majority) describes a large group of people, the noun itself is grammatically singular. The verb must agree with the grammatical number of its subject, so we use the singular wurde rather than the plural wurden.

Why is wurde at the very end of the sentence?

The word dass (that) is a subordinating conjunction. It introduces a subordinate clause and forces the conjugated verb for that specific clause, which in this case is wurde, to the very end of the sentence.

Why do we use wusste and wurde instead of the conversational past (Perfekt) tense?