Posted
January 11, 2021
Few alumni know this, but one of South Africa’s most important civil rights leaders is part of the University of Minnesota family. One hundred years ago, Alfred B. Xuma (B.S. 1920) graduated from the U of M.
The first western-trained Black physician to practice medicine in Johannesburg, Xuma (1893-1962) also became one of the most prominent Black political leaders in South Africa in the 1940s. He called for racial equality at a time when South Africa’s white minority ruled the country with an iron grip. As president of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1940 to 1949, Xuma recruited a new generation of Black South Africans into the struggle for racial equality, including Nelson Mandela.
