"Journeys in Africa" Fulbright Lecture - Dawne Y. Curry

Department of History Author

01/25/2019 Added

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Dr. Dawne Y. Curry presents on her experiences as a Fulbright scholar in South Africa in the 2017-2018 academic year

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[00:00:05.994]Good evening.
[00:00:07.246]Good evening.
[00:00:08.341]Good evening!
[00:00:09.629]Good evening!
[00:00:10.490]Thank you.
[00:00:11.900]You know, I believe in that African call
[00:00:13.720]and response pattern, so you know I have
[00:00:15.760]to make sure that my people are out there.
[00:00:19.400]So today, I'd like to thank James and Bob
[00:00:23.610]for the wonderful introductions
[00:00:25.930]and for the opportunity to stand before you tonight
[00:00:29.570]as a former Fulbright Scholar.
[00:00:32.650]I was trying to decide how I was gonna open.
[00:00:36.250]I thought about singing.
[00:00:39.360]I said I thought about singing, but I said,
[00:00:41.870]you know you can't carry a tune, so don't do that.
[00:00:45.650]So instead, I'm going to honor the ancestors,
[00:00:49.900]that are living, with a poem
[00:00:53.870]written by a South African name Lebo Mashile,
[00:01:00.180]which is called Tell Your Story.
[00:01:03.260]And she says, "After they've fed off of your memories,
[00:01:07.060]erased dreams from your eyes, broken the seams of sanity,
[00:01:12.010]and glued what's left together with lies.
[00:01:15.240]After the choices and voices have left you alone,
[00:01:18.950]and silence grows solid, adhering like flesh to your bones,
[00:01:24.320]they've always known your spirit's home.
[00:01:26.860]Lay in your gentle sway to light and substance,
[00:01:30.560]but jaded mirrors and false prophets
[00:01:33.380]have a way of removing you from yourself.
[00:01:37.310]You who lives with seven names.
[00:01:39.890]You who walks with seven faces.
[00:01:42.560]None can eliminate your pain.
[00:01:45.210]Tell your story.
[00:01:46.770]Let it nourish you, sustain you, and claim you.
[00:01:50.690]Tell your story.
[00:01:52.380]Let it feed you, heal you, and release you.
[00:01:56.510]Tell your story.
[00:01:57.880]Let it twist and remix your shattered heart.
[00:02:01.760]Tell your story.
[00:02:03.080]Until your past stops tearing your present apart."
[00:02:08.050]So my story today, ya know,
[00:02:12.280]it's been going on for some time.
[00:02:14.810]I've been to South Africa multiple occasions.
[00:02:18.340]But I think this Fulbright year, I was the most present.
[00:02:23.030]And when I said it, I'm savoring every moment of it.
[00:02:27.420]So, on March 23, 2017,
[00:02:36.340]I was in Cape Town, South Africa conducting research,
[00:02:40.120]and something told me at 3:30 p.m.
[00:02:43.340]their time, to check my email.
[00:02:46.620]And so, I received this email which stated,
[00:02:50.517]"On behalf of the J. William Fulbright Foreign
[00:02:53.350]Scholarship Board, I am pleased to congratulate you
[00:02:56.860]on your selection for a Fulbright award to South Africa."
[00:03:02.060]I stepped back from the laptop.
[00:03:04.830]I'm like, is this for real?
[00:03:06.590]Because I was told that we would hear
[00:03:09.910]about the result in April.
[00:03:13.200]So, I went back and laid on the couch.
[00:03:17.057]Was like, that must be, that must not be for real.
[00:03:19.620]So I wrote a couple of friends and I said
[00:03:22.070]if they respond back with congratulations,
[00:03:24.870]this email must be real and so it was.
[00:03:28.260]And that day changed my life.
[00:03:31.470]And I had wanted to call everybody, my mama, my professors,
[00:03:37.150]even Jacob Zuma, ya know, the former President
[00:03:39.500]of South Africa, but then I wondered why would I call him?
[00:03:43.040]So, as a scholar who has been researching the role
[00:03:49.440]of women in political systems in South Africa
[00:03:51.930]for more than 15 years, I was excited to return
[00:03:55.820]to my beloved home to carry out
[00:03:58.190]the mandates of a Fulbright Scholar.
[00:04:01.190]And in 1946, then Senator J. William Fulbright,
[00:04:05.020]of Arkansas introduced the Fulbright program,
[00:04:08.120]awarding approximately eight thousand grants annually.
[00:04:12.140]And this is a program that is sponsored
[00:04:14.170]by the U.S. Department of State Bureau
[00:04:16.200]of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
[00:04:19.890]I stand before you as a Fulbright Scholar
[00:04:22.340]because of my industry first and foremost,
[00:04:24.620]but also because of the constructive criticism
[00:04:29.380]and support that I've received from colleagues
[00:04:31.480]like Amelia Montes, Parks Coble, Amy Burnett,
[00:04:35.160]Laura Munoz, and Laura Damuth,
[00:04:39.350]who read drafts of my proposal.
[00:04:43.600]And I would also like to thank my chair,
[00:04:47.140]Dr. James Le Sueur for his enthusiastic support.
[00:04:50.640]And I would also like to thank, my friend, Natasha
[00:04:53.090]Crawford who also made it possible for me
[00:04:55.860]to conduct my research in South Africa.
[00:05:00.140]So, as an ambassador for the United States
[00:05:04.860]Department of State and the University of Nebraska,
[00:05:07.990]I carried out culture exchange
[00:05:09.640]and research endeavor for one year.
[00:05:11.880]I was based in Johannesburg, and if anybody
[00:05:15.120]knows me, knows that is my home in South Africa
[00:05:19.080]and so I will call it like I call it all the time, Joburg.
[00:05:23.470]So I was in Joburg, I conducted research at multiple
[00:05:27.990]archival institutions such as The William Cullen
[00:05:31.010]Library at the University of Witwatersrand,
[00:05:34.010]the National Archives of South Africa in Pretoria,
[00:05:37.670]the Campbell Collections in Durban, South Africa,
[00:05:41.530]the Western Cape Repositories in Cape Town,
[00:05:45.540]as well as the Mayibuye Center
[00:05:47.380]at the University of the Western Cape.
[00:05:51.050]And so, my intellectual inquiry,
[00:05:59.110]that's me trying to be all astute in the archives,
[00:06:06.514]dealt with several women, for instance,
[00:06:09.640]Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala, Mina Tembeka Soga,
[00:06:13.280]Charlotte Maxeke, Bertin Keezey, Nokutela Dube,
[00:06:18.330]the Alexander Women's League, among other
[00:06:21.060]female subjects to explore how they proffer
[00:06:24.790]resolutions for a better South African Society.
[00:06:27.960]In the interest of time, I will focus on one woman,
[00:06:31.440]Lilian Tshabalala and weave in other subjects
[00:06:35.560]into the conversation.
[00:06:37.100]I was introduced to Tshabalala in
[00:06:39.710]a graduate class at Ohio University.
[00:06:42.500]And the professor there was talking about
[00:06:45.060]the bus boycotts of Alexandra and he talked
[00:06:47.830]about this woman and I wanted to know more
[00:06:50.910]about this woman because much wasn't written
[00:06:53.410]about women in the Alexandra bus boycotts.
[00:06:56.990]Say like we have for the Montgomery bus boycott,
[00:07:00.240]where you know the names of multiple women
[00:07:03.150]who contributed to that historic feat.
[00:07:07.530]Now, Tshabalala was born 1888 to parents
[00:07:12.080]Daniel and Chandelier Tshabalala of royal descent,
[00:07:15.330]as their clan name is Shengo Atestit.
[00:07:18.010]She grew up near Lady Smith, where she would attend
[00:07:20.570]the former Oshlan Institute,
[00:07:22.780]modeled on African-American educator
[00:07:25.280]Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee University.
[00:07:29.530]Inspired by the modern learning and labor,
[00:07:31.780]Oshlan subscribed to the stern social darwinist principle
[00:07:36.410]of survival of the fittest,
[00:07:38.470]in hopes that its pupils would be an educated,
[00:07:41.660]self-sufficient, Kolwa elite,
[00:07:44.130]or African-Christian bourgeoisie.
[00:07:47.260]As Oklang graduates, Tshabalala always invoked
[00:07:50.340]a cultural ethos that had defined the institution,
[00:07:53.700]and watched this core message of upliftment.
[00:07:57.550]I'm gonna talk about three examples use as Tshabalala,
[00:08:01.920]who, after she was in the United States from 1912
[00:08:05.640]to 1930, and during that time in which she went
[00:08:10.330]back to South Africa, she started two women's organizations.
[00:08:13.840]One was the Daughters of Africa,
[00:08:15.770]which was modeled on the African-American club
[00:08:19.580]called the National Association of colored women.
[00:08:22.843]She founded in 1932.
[00:08:26.240]And she also founded the Women's Brigade,
[00:08:28.580]which maintains solidarity in good order in Alexandra,
[00:08:32.240]which is a township nine miles northeast of Johannesburg.
[00:08:38.190]And I'm gonna use her to cite three examples
[00:08:42.570]of how African women contributed to political thought,
[00:08:46.750]which is the core of my next intellectual offering.
[00:08:53.490]So join for Tshabalala's editorials that appeared in
[00:08:56.500]the wildly read African Newspaper, Bantu World,
[00:08:59.175]in the 1930's, she explored as one of her intellectual
[00:09:03.130]questions nationhood.
[00:09:04.890]Because she defined nation,
[00:09:07.890]Tshabalala swam in highly-charted, male-dominated waters.
[00:09:11.410]Her male contemporaries who represented the
[00:09:13.630]Natal Native Congress and the African National Congress,
[00:09:18.930]formed respectively in 1901 and 1912, differed from her.
[00:09:23.900]In particular, the Natal Native Congress
[00:09:26.140]humanized the nation by calling it the eyes, the ears,
[00:09:29.810]the mouth, and the voice of the African people.
[00:09:33.750]Not seeing the nation as a watchdog,
[00:09:36.300]Tshabalala viewed the nation as an instrument
[00:09:40.200]to address societal ills, to foster greater unity,
[00:09:43.130]to find women's woes, and to method to youth.
[00:09:46.620]Different from the ANC, and the in ANC,
[00:09:49.660]who rally heavily around race to bring African's together.
[00:09:53.910]Tshabalala in much the same fashion as African-American
[00:09:57.390]educator Booker T. Washington,
[00:09:59.380]champion self-help in industry.
[00:10:02.690]And she did this through her Daughters of Africa,
[00:10:06.330]which served as a model, as a blueprint,
[00:10:08.890]for how to construct civic engagement
[00:10:13.110]and a Christian democracy.
[00:10:16.630]In another example that further illustrates
[00:10:19.090]Tshabalala's connectivity with male leaders.
[00:10:21.760]In 1857, linguist composer and reverend Tia Sogo
[00:10:27.220]pled for African's to fulfill, realize their promise
[00:10:30.350]as the song's title translates.
[00:10:33.520]Word about the loss of African identity,
[00:10:36.290]and mid-European encroachment and domination,
[00:10:39.070]Soga implored African's to fulfill, realize their promise.
[00:10:43.030]And the quest to seek a higher power,
[00:10:45.410]Soga called on a faithful, truthful God,
[00:10:48.230]to save all races, all nation.
[00:10:51.230]As Tshabalala would echo this message in her song,
[00:10:55.990]entitled Go to Build Their House.
[00:10:59.430]This hymn will serve as a how-to manual
[00:11:04.180]that authorize women to pray, to stand,
[00:11:06.730]to donate, to set a good example, to hold hands,
[00:11:09.640]and to work with God.
[00:11:11.290]Those who build a house like Soga's composition,
[00:11:15.000]call for God to hear them when they pray for the nation,
[00:11:18.030]the whole black nation.
[00:11:20.230]Now, she would go on to participate
[00:11:23.010]in similar dialogues with women,
[00:11:25.320]and my point of all of this is to show that African women
[00:11:28.990]were in conversation with each other, as well as men,
[00:11:32.510]and that is what I was able to piece more together
[00:11:38.720]as a Fulbright scholar.
[00:11:41.240]So, she had a conversation with Nokutela Dube,
[00:11:43.950]who was a dressmaker, musician, and teacher,
[00:11:46.770]as she was the wife of the ANC's first president
[00:11:49.350]John L Dube.
[00:11:51.880]And Dube would use music to uplift,
[00:11:54.240]to teach, and construct an African nation.
[00:11:57.670]And these women were not alone.
[00:11:59.750]West Africans Adelaide Casely-Hayford Smith
[00:12:04.390]joined her contemporaries in employing music
[00:12:07.110]when she composed the school song
[00:12:09.620]so that all the world may know girls.
[00:12:12.990]Tshabalala used litanies, songs, and editorials
[00:12:16.480]to create a blueprint for a better South African society.
[00:12:20.900]From 1912 to 1919, she trained as a missionary
[00:12:25.560]at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois,
[00:12:29.310]and the New Britain Normal School in Hartford, Connecticut.
[00:12:33.420]As a student in two of the best
[00:12:35.310]missionary schools in the world, Tshabalala gained valuable
[00:12:38.710]knowledge that she later applied as a principal
[00:12:41.370]at a girls training school in present day Ghana,
[00:12:44.510]formally known as the Gold Coast
[00:12:46.600]during her three year tenure there from 1919 to 1922.
[00:12:52.410]Because Ghana provided another geographical landscape
[00:12:56.050]to piece together Tshabalala's narrative
[00:12:58.110]with other women on the African continent.
[00:13:00.690]I stepped foot in this country
[00:13:02.960]for the very first time in April 2018.
[00:13:06.830]And I was able to do this because Fulbright offered
[00:13:09.930]a separate program called the Africa Regional
[00:13:13.390]Travel Program, which I had to submit a proposal of budget,
[00:13:17.630]and get a letter invitation from the host institution
[00:13:21.560]that I was seeking to establish collegial relations with.
[00:13:26.730]So the purpose of the RTP was to allow wordies
[00:13:30.700]the opportunity to disseminate knowledge in one
[00:13:33.670]or multiple countries through workshops, presentations,
[00:13:36.950]lectures, performances, exhibits, and other exchanges.
[00:13:45.380]So, my main goal was to build relations
[00:13:49.290]with this organization, and to continue the work
[00:13:51.420]that I had already done as a research associate
[00:13:54.250]at the University of Pretoria, where I presented several
[00:13:57.890]seminars, and where I will also be presenting
[00:14:02.180]this coming July as a co-organizer of a
[00:14:04.730]kolokolo with my colleague Thula Simpson there.
[00:14:12.760]So, being in Ghana provided me the opportunity
[00:14:16.470]to peace together more about Tshabalala.
[00:14:19.920]I wanted to know more about this woman who,
[00:14:24.850]often times, appeared in the newspapers in dresses
[00:14:29.700]draped by pearls, but when the former senator
[00:14:34.240]of Johannesburg described her in his memoir
[00:14:37.420]as a fierce woman who could, at any moment,
[00:14:42.920]burst into a loud command or laughter
[00:14:45.480]when she paraded throughout the township of Alexander
[00:14:49.200]to stop people from boarding the buses.
[00:14:51.930]And I kept wondering by going to Ghana,
[00:14:54.790]would the real Tshabalala stand up,
[00:14:56.970]like those contestants had done numerous times
[00:15:00.050]on the hit television game show, Truth or Consequences.
[00:15:05.025]Y'all remember that?
[00:15:09.890]So, in addition to solving this riddle,
[00:15:13.120]I wanted to further my own education as a scholar,
[00:15:15.900]as a professor, and as a person, by touring
[00:15:18.380]various historic sites within and outside the capital.
[00:15:23.640]I presented my work on Tshabalala as a participant
[00:15:29.540]in a seminar series at the University
[00:15:35.040]of Ghana, and its Institute of African Studies.
[00:15:39.410]My research was well-received.
[00:15:41.820]It was in an audience that had no idea that they had a
[00:15:46.030]connection like this to a South African.
[00:15:49.330]So that sparked up many conversations post-talk.
[00:15:54.290]So after that talk, they treated me to a meal,
[00:15:56.960]and of course I downed that with a nice beverage,
[00:16:00.200]adult beverage, you know.
[00:16:02.260]And after, also, I served as a guest on the universities
[00:16:06.070]radio station, in a segment entitled Interrogated Africa,
[00:16:10.240]which I showcase Tshabalala and made comparisons
[00:16:13.120]with other women on the continent,
[00:16:14.970]like Ghana's Yaa Asantewaa,
[00:16:16.320]one of the nations important historical figures.
[00:16:20.350]I will tell you more about these connections by relaying
[00:16:23.070]my trip to one of the slave castles that I visited.
[00:16:26.550]At Cape Coast Castle, I came even closer to Yaa Asantewaa,
[00:16:31.820]a military strategist who opposed British colonialism
[00:16:35.000]when I stood in the very room
[00:16:36.490]where the British had held her captive.
[00:16:38.890]Originally built by the Portuguese,
[00:16:41.990]Cape Coast chains several European hands
[00:16:45.360]before it landed with the British in 1664.
[00:16:49.020]The British had placed 200 shackled women in a dungeon.
[00:16:52.860]This very dark and poorly ventilated chamber where they ate,
[00:16:57.430]bathed, and excremented human waste.
[00:17:00.690]On the floor was a urinal, carved in a rectangular shape
[00:17:04.860]that defined a large part of the cement floor.
[00:17:07.940]Feces were piled high up against the wall near the door.
[00:17:12.440]The line of their height still etched the wall
[00:17:16.880]and if this didn't place us in their shoes,
[00:17:20.180]the guy closed the door and immediately darkness enveloped.
[00:17:32.540]I almost hyperventilated and,
[00:17:37.570]yeah.
[00:17:38.880]It was a very hard thing to do,
[00:17:41.350]but it allowed me to be able to teach this
[00:17:46.690]by having walked through those same paths
[00:17:50.780]that former African captives were held.
[00:17:56.390]So when we were in that dark room,
[00:17:59.870]and there was no illumination,
[00:18:03.400]no ventilation, I thought about a similar experience
[00:18:07.220]that Yunasunis and I shared at the slave castle Cape Town
[00:18:11.670]when I taught my history of South Africa course
[00:18:13.890]there in 2014, 2016, and 2017.
[00:18:18.110]Something had possessed me.
[00:18:20.410]Tears rolled down my face.
[00:18:23.550]Later, I thought about this and how uncomfortable I felt,
[00:18:28.950]and wondered why I subjected myself to this.
[00:18:32.630]But as the late Anthony Bourdain once said,
[00:18:35.407]"Travel isn't always pretty, it isn't always comfortable.
[00:18:39.720]Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart,
[00:18:43.350]but that's okay.
[00:18:45.020]The journey changes you, it should change you.
[00:18:48.090]It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness,
[00:18:51.150]on your heart, and on your body."
[00:18:53.750]He was so right, the Cape Coast Slave Castle
[00:18:57.800]brought all of my inner-grief to the surface.
[00:19:02.020]It reminded me of the many occasions during this Fulbright
[00:19:05.220]year that I conducted interviews with South African's
[00:19:08.320]who shared narratives about the atrocities
[00:19:10.990]that they endured under apartheid.
[00:19:13.680]How they grieved when the South African regimen
[00:19:16.090]prohibited a regulated funerary practices,
[00:19:19.170]and how they found other ways to mourn,
[00:19:21.370]like to reclaim the bodies,
[00:19:23.470]visit the cites of death, and create old obituaries.
[00:19:27.250]My thoughts were transported to South Africa even further
[00:19:30.280]when I witnessed an alter adorned by wreaths
[00:19:33.410]that were lined up against the walls
[00:19:35.160]in another part of the dungeon.
[00:19:37.280]I made this connection because narrators that I interviewed
[00:19:40.440]often spoke about visiting the sites of death,
[00:19:43.690]and using blood stains, brains scattered on the ground,
[00:19:47.510]and other markers on the landscape that had commemorated
[00:19:50.570]the deceased in a grizzly way.
[00:19:53.180]I thought wow,
[00:19:56.010]this is how the spirits,
[00:19:57.380]African descendants can mourn and eulogize
[00:20:00.060]the pain of the past and present.
[00:20:03.510]African female captives were also part of this conversation.
[00:20:06.990]The statues of their heads voices their despair,
[00:20:10.380]agony, sorrow, uncertainty, and their communal
[00:20:13.420]and individual loss in much the same way
[00:20:16.270]that I and other visitors shared.
[00:20:19.060]We walked throughout that dungeon,
[00:20:21.110]through the tunnel down, bending down in one part
[00:20:24.440]before we crossed the door of no return
[00:20:26.830]and that is the door where African's were the last time
[00:20:32.790]that they were on African soil, and they went through
[00:20:36.560]that door to get to those ships that were
[00:20:38.690]carrying them across seas, along to the middle passage,
[00:20:44.010]to places they never heard of before.
[00:20:48.090]While many of the names of these women
[00:20:49.930]who passed through this portal remain unknown,
[00:20:52.540]Yaa Asantewaa is immortalized.
[00:20:55.540]She's also seared her name in the worlds consciousness
[00:20:59.600]by issuing this military declaration before she led
[00:21:02.910]the Ashanti people against the British
[00:21:05.240]and the War of the Golden Stool,
[00:21:07.380]which is a revered symbol of Ghanan authority.
[00:21:13.600]She said this,
[00:21:15.457]"Now, I have seen that some of you feared to go forward
[00:21:19.050]to fight for our King.
[00:21:20.550]If it were the brave days of Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye,
[00:21:25.160]and Opoku Ware the first, chiefs would not sit down
[00:21:30.000]to see their king taken without firing a short.
[00:21:32.900]No white man could have dared to speak
[00:21:34.960]to the chiefs of Asante in the way the governor
[00:21:37.630]spoke to you chiefs this morning.
[00:21:39.840]Is it true that the bravery of Asante is no more?
[00:21:44.240]I cannot believe it, it cannot be.
[00:21:47.970]I must say this, if you, the men of Asante,
[00:21:51.610]will not go forward, then we will.
[00:21:54.010]I shall call upon my fellow women.
[00:21:56.470]We will fight the fight the white men,
[00:21:57.890]we will fight till the last of us falls on the battlefield."
[00:22:02.580]Years later, in another way that I'm making connections
[00:22:07.000]with the African women, and having them in conversation
[00:22:09.840]with each other, and juxtaposing them alongside men.
[00:22:14.250]I've taken other quotes that are similar
[00:22:16.860]to make this connection.
[00:22:18.910]So, years later in 1940, Nigeria's
[00:22:22.090]Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the first woman to drive a car
[00:22:28.130]in that country in 1907.
[00:22:30.270]Founder of several women's organizations,
[00:22:33.450]one of them being Abeokuta Women's Union,
[00:22:36.460]which later became the Nigeria Women's Union.
[00:22:39.140]And she was also a traveler to the Soviet Union,
[00:22:43.420]China, and Hungary during the Cold War,
[00:22:46.320]and she echoed Yaa Asantewaa sentiment when she said,
[00:22:50.837]"In a move to empower women," she remarked,
[00:22:53.807]"for a long time, you have used your penis
[00:22:57.250]as a mark of authority that you are our husband.
[00:23:00.880]Today, we shall reverse the order and use our vagina
[00:23:05.120]to play the role of husband."
[00:23:08.363]Tshabalala also saw to empower women,
[00:23:10.980]and call them to arms, and her many pronouncements
[00:23:14.610]in the editorials that she wrote,
[00:23:17.450]the meetings and conferences that she held,
[00:23:20.930]and in a statement that acknowledge the ills that plagued
[00:23:24.450]pre-apartheid South Africa,
[00:23:26.560]which is known as the segregation era.
[00:23:29.640]She talked about the constraints and mobility
[00:23:32.230]brought on by the past laws.
[00:23:33.950]Those identity documents that African men
[00:23:37.410]first had to carry on their persons at all times,
[00:23:42.490]or else face arrest or fines.
[00:23:46.250]She also talked about the geographical sequestration
[00:23:49.970]of African's into townships,
[00:23:51.980]and how the segregation was marked on the landscape.
[00:23:55.820]The extraction of cheap, and pliant labor.
[00:23:59.310]The rise of urban vices, gangsterism, prostitution,
[00:24:03.390]alcoholism, and increasing economic and political
[00:24:07.210]infringements, led Tshabalala to conclude
[00:24:11.230]that the South African struggle was a human rights issue
[00:24:15.410]that only God could resolve through the voice of women.
[00:24:19.120]And again, these women are talking to each other,
[00:24:22.130]and talking about the power, the innate power,
[00:24:25.540]of African women.
[00:24:27.460]And I'm gonna make one more connection before I close
[00:24:30.720]and this pertains to local history.
[00:24:33.590]One of the women that I have been researching
[00:24:35.680]was actually in Lincoln.
[00:24:38.660]In 1939, Mina Tembeka Soga,
[00:24:42.320]who was the leader of the National Council of African Women,
[00:24:46.290]carried forth the missionary spirit when she
[00:24:48.880]called on African's to embrace Christianity.
[00:24:53.420]So, in many ways, these pronouncements by African women
[00:24:58.449]were said to unify, to bring together women and men,
[00:25:04.160]occupying different and similar places
[00:25:07.060]on the African continent.
[00:25:08.960]How they channeled each other in the hours of resistance,
[00:25:12.810]and become each other spirit mediums.
[00:25:17.440]As spirit mediums who carry the spirit of Yaa Asantewaa,
[00:25:21.130]they provided framework for understand how African women
[00:25:24.420]contributed to intellectual thought,
[00:25:26.780]how they interpreted the conditions
[00:25:28.630]of their respected societies, and how they spoke
[00:25:31.490]to each other as actors on a continental stage.
[00:25:36.000]Later, again, I spent a lot of time
[00:25:39.860]in South Africa reflecting.
[00:25:42.540]I occupied this chair where I stayed and, in fact,
[00:25:46.980]people saw that as my chair, and even told people to get up,
[00:25:51.210]you know that's Dawne's chair.
[00:25:53.160]So, in that chair, I was able to contemplate,
[00:25:55.900]sip on my tea, and think about all of this.
[00:26:01.000]As a Fulbright scholar, and think about that slave castle
[00:26:05.990]whose heat and hollowness has suffocated me,
[00:26:09.400]my story was being told through these women.
[00:26:12.470]As a scholar, as a traveler, as an educator,
[00:26:15.980]and as a person in search of knowledge.
[00:26:18.610]That's like Mashile's poems suggests,
[00:26:22.560]I will continue to share their narratives until my past,
[00:26:27.730]and theirs, stops tearing my present apart.
[00:26:32.370]And that is how the Fulbright has impacted me
[00:26:37.470]and my research.
[00:26:38.610]Thank you.

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"Journeys in Africa" Fulbright Lecture - Dawne Y. Curry

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