Singing out in protest
America’s voices against apartheid were led by trailblazing Charlotte Maxeke
AS SOUTH Africa celebrates “The Year of Charlotte Maxeke”, your American brothers and sisters wish to join you in remembering and honouring this remarkable woman and fearless pioneer who also blazed a trail in the US on her lifetime journey of service to her people and for the cause of liberation, justice and equality everywhere.
As a graduate from Wilberforce University in the US and the first African woman from South Africa to earn the BSc degree, her life reveals the innumerable, but often unseen and unknown, ties that bind AfricanAmericans and black South Africans.
Maxeke’s sojourn in the US began in Kimberley in 1890 when she attended a performance by American singing troupe, the Virginia Jubilee Singers, on its tour in South Africa.
Led by the exuberant Orpheus McAdoo, the Virginia Jubilee Singers were an African-American choral group which specialised in singing gospel music, the highly affective songs their enslaved ancestors had sung as a cathartic release and coping mechanism for the brutalities of slavery.
“Jubilee” was chosen as the name because it was a Biblical reference to freedom.
“During the tour, McAdoo would often extol the postbellum achievements of black Americans in the US, including black-owned businesses, colleges, churches, and fraternal organisations, and the increasing opportunities for social and economic advancement.
“The spirituality of the jubilee songs, as well as McAdoo’s depictions of opportunities for blacks in America, resonated deeply within Maxeke, a gifted contralto and teacher.
“As a teacher, Maxeke recognised the value of an education, but she also understood the harsh realities of living in colonised South Africa.
“There were no equivalent to a Hampton or Tuskeegee to which black South Africans could attend.
“In the late 19th and early 20th century in South Africa, whites denied most Africans the opportunity for an education, except for Christian religious training to become missionaries, and even in the case of religious training, educational opportunities were largely limited to white mission schools which Africans found unpalatable.
“Lovedale was the only institution in the country offering Africans a complete secondary school curriculum.”
With educational opportunities within the country limited, South Africans looked to institutions in Europe and the US.
Looking for an opportunity to travel and perhaps study abroad, Maxeke joined a choral group modelled after the Virginia Jubilee Singers, the
African Jubilee Singers, and managed by white promoters.
During its tour of Great Britain, Maxeke met other African-Americans who confirmed McAdoo’s portrayals of the educational opportunities for blacks in the US. She set her sights on going to the US with the hopes of attending college there.
When the tour promoters planned a second tour that would include the US, Maxeke did not hesitate to sign up.
Initially, the US tour was a great success. However, due to mismanagement and bad dealings by promoters, the singers were left stranded and bankrupt in Cleveland, Ohio.
Fortunately, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and advocate of African-American civil rights, Reverdy Cassius Ransom, came to the rescue of the singers.
Ransom believed, quite correctly in Maxeke’s case, that the African singers would make excellent missionaries.
With the support of Bishop Benjamin Arnett, chairperson of the board of trustees at Wilberforce University, they were able to enrol six of the singers into the university.
Once enrolled, Maxeke advocated for other South Africans to attend Wilberforce. Joining her there were James Tantsi, Charles Dube, Henry Msikinya, Edward Tolityi Magaya, and Marshall Maxeke, her future husband. (Tantsi and Marshall Maxeke later established the SA Native National Congress in 1921, precursor to the ANC).
When Maxeke and the other South Africans arrived at Wilberforce in 1894, senior AMEC Bishop Daniel Payne’s influence dominated the institution.
Bishop Payne died in 1893, but he was a towering African-American religious figure who, like many black leaders of this period, believed that African-Americans and other blacks could gain admission into the mainstream of white society if they were virtuous, obtained a western education, and practised good hygiene.
In hindsight, this belief omitted the obvious economic competition that drove race as a social construct and racial segregation into existence, but it largely informed education at Wilberforce and other historically black colleges and universities in the US at that time.
One of their instructors at Wilberforce was a young WEB du Bois, preeminent African American scholar of the 20th Century, first African-American to earn his PhD from Harvard University in 1895. He and Maxeke forged a lifelong friendship.
Her insight into the experiences of black South Africans contributed to his understanding of racialism and informed his thinking about the global dimensions of racial oppression.
We are delighted to congratulate South Africa this Freedom Day on your 27 years of freedom and democracy and join in acknowledging the tremendous life and legacy of Charlotte Manye Maxeke.