Charlotte Manye Maxeke was simply one of South Africa's greatest modernists. She was the greatest exemplifier of what New Africanism could learn from New Negroism. Having heard Orpheus McAdoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers touring in the early 1890s, she became enarmored to Negro Spirituals and Christian Hymns. This made her recognize that the historical distance between the New Negroes and New Africans was not that far apart. This recognition made her entry into New Negro modernity arguably the most consequential of all the New Africans. She came to accept with profound conviction the pedagogics of Booker T. Washington articulated in Up From Slavery that education was the most effective entry-ways into modernity. Her unrelenting drive to acquire education in at the Wilberforce University in United States, and later her dissemination of it at Wilberforce Institute she founded in South Africa, was modelled on the practical attainments of Booker T. Washington. This absolute determination to acquire education in America had a profound effect on her younger New African colleague Alfred B Xuma, who followed her to that country. At Wilberforce University she absorbed the political philosophy of her great teacher W. E. B. Du Bois which was to serve her well in the ideological struggles within the ANC. While still a student in America she enabled the communication to be established between her uncle, Mangane Maake Mokone, the founder of Ethiopianism in South Africa and Bishop Henry Turner, the great Bishop of the AME Church. The consequences of this encounter have been profound in our country. All of this makes Charlotte Manye Maxeke a great modernizer. Maxeke can legitimately claim to have been one of the founders of feminism in South Africa. This is how she has been rightly viewed by Ellen Kuzwayo in Call Me Woman. Xuma's modernizing of the ANC during his presidency between 1940 and 1949 could be partly attributed to her inspiration and example of her determination. This is the reason that Xuma's biographical pamphlet on this great woman takes on such significance. Here is what he partly says in this historical sketch: "Not only has she been member of organizations that were already established, but she has herself as necessity demanded, organized and led groups to meet special needs. Among these and perhaps the most important organization of her creation was the Bantu Women's League for the protection of African Women's rights. As its president her League succeeded in many petitions drawn up to defend the black women's rights. Most important of these petitions was that against the diabolical system of requiring black women to carry passes or papers of identification to be shown on demand of certain white officials. . . . Charlotte is an argument for the education of African girls to lead exemplary lives as wives and as leaders of our womanhood to better things. . . . Africa thanks God for Charlotte" (Charlotte Manye (Maxeke) Or What An Educated African Girl Can Do, Society of the AME Church, 1930). Professor D. D. T. Jabavu, then the leading New African academic scholar, also made the following pertinent observation: "Throughout all her life she has been engaged in efforts of a patriotic character on behalf of the aboriginal races of Africa, these efforts entailing herculean tasks every time. Her social line has been the redemption of our womanhood as well as humanity in general. The League of Bantu Women which she was responsible for starting, was a wonderful movement that stirred the imagination of our people and unmistakably infused a widened public spirit among our women-folk throughout South Africa with results still traceable right to the present time" (cited by Alfred B Xuma). Not only was Charlotte Manye Maxeke held in high esteem by all the major New African intellectuals, he was remembered with great fondness by the greatest New Negro intellectual, W. E. B. Du Bois, approximately forty years after leaving his classroom: "I have known Charlotte Manye Maxeke since 1894, when I went to Wilberforce University as a teacher. She was one of the three or four students from South Africa, and was the only woman. She was especially the friend of Nina Gomer, the student who afterwards became my wife. . . . I regard Mrs Maxeke as a pioneer in one of the greatest of human causes, working in extraordinarily difficult circumstances to lead a people, in the face of prejudice, not only against her race but against her sex. . . . I think that what Mrs Maxeke has accomplished should encourage all men, especially those of African descent" (Preface to Alfred B Xuma's biographical sketch). It remains to close this dossier with the authoritative appraisal of Z. K. Matthews, who has written the most extensive historical evaluation of the achievements of the New African intelligentsia, which appeared in Imvo Zabantsundu from June 3 to November 21, 1961. Concerning Maxeke, Matthews writes: "She was an eloquent speaker and a fearless denouncer of the disabilities under which her people laboured. Soon she came to be recognised as an authority, especially in matters affecting women and juveniles. In this capacity she often appeared before Government Commissions to give evidence on public questions affecting African women and children. . . . So she was also active in the political organisations of the African people. She encouraged women to enter into the political arena and in the new outlawed A. N. C. She was one of those who advocated the establishment of the Women's Section of the A. N. C. commonly known as the Women's League. For many years she was its President. Charlotte Maxeke was a stout lady with a striking face, with sharp penetrating eyes which could strike terror into those who crossed words with her and yet be gentle and kind to those who needed her sympathy" ("Mrs Charlotte M. Maxeke: Defender of Women's Rights", September 9, 1961). With the passage of time, the political and intellectual stature of Charlotte Manye Maxeke has attained greater heights. The evidence of this is the chapter devoted to her in James T. Campbell's Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Oxford university Press, New York, 1995, pp.249-294); and the publication a few year back of the biography/autobiography of Charlotte Maxeke's sister: The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa by Margaret McCord (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1995).