Cape Town - Technology company Google on Thursday honoured Charlotte Maxeke on her 151st birthday with a fitting doodle on the homepage of its website.
Maxeke was born near Fort Beaufort in South Africa in 1871.
Her mother was a teacher, and her father was a roads foreman. Her father was also a lay preacher in a Presbyterian church. She planned to be a teacher, according to Wilberforce University, where she studied and obtained a degree.
In 1891, Charlotte and her sister, Kate, were invited to join the African Jubilee Choir and tour Britain.
The choir was invited to sing for Queen Victoria. During the tour, Maxeke met students from Wilberforce University. She realised for the first time that in the United States, there were opportunities for black students which were not available in South Africa. Eventually, the African Jubilee Choir toured the United States.
Maxeke was the first black woman in South Africa to graduate with a university degree with a B.sc from Wilberforce University Ohio in 1903, as well as the first black African woman to graduate from an American university.
According to South African History Online, many sources cite Charlotte Maxeke’s (née Mannya) birth place as Fort Beaufort, the Eastern Cape. However, there are other sources that claim she was born in the Polokwane area, as her birth name Charlotte Makgomo Mannya is Sotho or Pedi.
In 1918, Maxeke founded the Bantu Women's League of SANNC (South African Native National Congress). This is where she was involved in multiracial movements and addressed an organisation for the voting rights of women. She was also involved in protests about low wages. She set up an employment agency for Africans in Johannesburg.
Maxeke was often honoured as 'Mother of Black Freedom in South Africa' and had an ANC nursery school named after her in Tanzania, making her one of the first Black South Africans to fight for freedom from exploitative and social conditions of African women.
IOL