This much-awaited volume uncovers the long-lost pages of the major African multi-lingual newspaper, "Abantu-Batho." Founded in 1912 by African National Congress (ANC) convener Pixley Seme, with assistance from the Swazi Queen, the paper published until 1931, and this work shows how it attracted the cream of African politicians; journalists; and poets Mqhayi, Nontsisi, and Grendon. Comprising both essays on and texts from the paper, this book explores the complex movements and individuals that emerged as the essays contribute rich, new material to provide clearer insights into South African politics and intellectual life. "The People's Paper" unveils a judicious selection of never-before-published columns, spanning every year of its life and drawn from repositories on three continents. Distinguished historians and literary scholars together with exciting young scholars plumb the lives and ideas of editors, writers, readers and allied movements. Sharing the considerable interest in the ANC centenary, this unique book will have a strong appeal and secure audience among all interested in history, politics, culture, literature, gender, biography, and journalism studies, from academics and students to a general public interested in knowing about this unique newspaper, its people, and the stories that once captivated South Africans.

In an excellent addition to the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series, Robert Trent Vinson recovers the important but largely forgotten story of Albert Luthuli, Africa's first Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967. One of the most respected African leaders, Luthuli linked South African antiapartheid politics with other movements, becoming South Africa's leading advocate of Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent civil disobedience techniques. He also framed apartheid as a crime against humanity and thus linked South African antiapartheid struggles with international human rights campaigns. Unlike previous studies, this book places Luthuli and the South African antiapartheid struggle in new global contexts, and aspects of Luthuli's leadership that were not previously publicly known: Vinson is the first to use new archival evidence, numerous oral interviews, and personal memoirs to reveal that Luthuli privately supported sabotage as an additional strategy to end apartheid. This multifaceted portrait will be indispensable to students of African history and politics and nonviolence movements worldwide.

For more than half a century before World War II, black South Africans and "American Negroes"-a group that included African Americans and black West Indians-established close institutional and personal relationships that laid the necessary groundwork for the successful South African and American antiapartheid movements. Though African Americans suffered under Jim Crow racial discrimination, oppressed Africans saw African Americans as free people who had risen from slavery to success and were role models and potential liberators. Many African Americans, regarded initially by the South African government as "honorary whites" exempt from segregation, also saw their activities in South Africa as a divinely ordained mission to establish "Africa for Africans," liberated from European empires. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest black-led movement with two million members and supporters in forty-three countries at its height in the early 1920s, was the most anticipated source of liberation. Though these liberation prophecies went unfulfilled, black South Africans continued to view African Americans as inspirational models and as critical partners in the global antiapartheid struggle. The Americans Are Coming! is a rare case study that places African history and American history in a global context and centers Africa in African Diaspora studies.