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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:An African American 'Mother of the Nation': Madie Hall Xuma in South Africa, 1940-1963
Author:Berger, IrisISNI
Year:2001
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:27
Issue:3
Period:September
Pages:547-566
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:African Americans
women's organizations
biographies (form)
Women's Issues
History and Exploration
nationalism
Politics and Government
Ethnic and Race Relations
organizations
Historical/Biographical
About person:Madie Hall Xuma
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/823315
Abstract:Madie Hall was among the most prominent African Americans to live in South Africa during the 20th century. She arrived in the country in 1940 to marry A.B. Xuma, who was soon to become President of the ANC. By the time she left in 1963, following her husband's death, Hall had helped to revitalize the Women's League of the ANC and had launched the Zenzele clubs, an influential network of women's organizations eventually linked to the international Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). As opposed to the opinion of some contemporaries and historians, the author argues that the Zenzele clubs were linked to a profoundly political philosophy of African American advancement and racial uplift. Furthermore, Hall believed adamantly in women's rights, perceiving Americans as having 'more advanced' attitudes toward women than South Africans. By the 1950s, however, ideas of racial uplift had become an anachronistic survival of an earlier age and women's politics were validated primarily by their association with struggles against apartheid. Notes, ref., sum.
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