"A thorough examination of Alfred B. Xuma's life and times, Gish's study not only broadens our understanding of African nationalism at a crucial period, but also sheds light on white liberalism, Pan Africanism, and the world of the educated African elite."--BOOK JACKET.

Revered in South Africa as "An African American Mother of the Nation," Madie Beatrice Hall Xuma spent her extraordinary life immersed in global women's activism. Wanda A. Hendricks's biography follows Hall Xuma from her upbringing in the Jim Crow South to her leadership role in the African National Congress (ANC) and beyond. Hall Xuma was already known for her social welfare work when she married South African physician and ANC activist Alfred Bitini Xuma. Becoming president of the ANC Women’s League put Hall Xuma at the forefront of fighting racial discrimination as South Africa moved toward apartheid. Hendricks provides the long-overlooked context for the events that undergirded Hall Xuma’s life and work. As she shows, a confluence of history, ideas, and organizations both shaped Hall Xuma and centered her in the histories of Black women and women’s activism, and of South Africa and the United States.

"This book, better than any I have seen, provides an understanding of the politics and ideology of orthodox African nationalism, or Black Power, in South Africa since World War II. . . . from the Youth League of the African Student National Congress (ANC) of the late 1940s to the South African Student Organization (SASO) and the Black Consciousness Movement of the 1970s."—Perspective "Clarifies some of the main issues that have divided the black leadership and rescues the work of some pioneering nationalist theorists. . . . It's an absorbing piece of history."—New York Times "Informative and well-researched. . . . She ably explores the nuances of the two main movements until 1960 and explains why blacks were so receptive to black consciousness in the late Sixties."—New York Review

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of World War 2, Africans displaced by colonial rule created an African-American myth - a myth which aggrandized the life and attainments of African Americans despite full knowledge of the discrimination to which they were subjected. The myth provided Africans in all parts of the continent with much needed succour and underpinned various religious, educational, political and social models based on the experience of African Americans whereby Africans sought to better their own lives.