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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | An African American 'Mother of the Nation': Madie Hall Xuma in South Africa, 1940-1963 |
Author: | Berger, Iris |
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. |