‘Lift as You Rise,’ 1934–40

Abstract

Following his wife’s death, Alfred Xuma, now 41, faced new challenges. Foremost among his responsibilities were providing for his children as a single parent and attending to his growing medical practice. But his sense of duty did not end with his family or his profession. By the mid-1930s, the escalating financial crises at Wilberforce Institute began to claim more and more of Xuma’s time. Unwilling to see the AME Church’s experiment in African self-help end in failure, Xuma launched a concerted effort to keep the Institute solvent. Perhaps most important, Xuma began to feel a greater needto define and defend African interests in the public arena. The threat of harsher segregationist legislation - looming ever larger after 1934 would bring Xuma deeper into politics than ever before.