“Hidden” in Plain Sight

Abstract

This chapter is an initial attempt to recover the overlooked histories of Garveyite women in Africa. During the 1920s and 1930s, working within the South African Garveyite movement inaugurated by Wellington Buthelezi, African women in the Transkei indigenized global Garveyism to further their objective of African self-determination, particularly in their political, religious and educational lives. Regarded as apolitical tribal “natives” by government officials and as legal minors and social children by both black and white men, Garveyite women adopted transnational “American” identities to assert themselves as political actors, moving freely throughout the country to prophesy “American Negro” deliverance and to organize hundreds of independent churches and independent schools.