Lida Clanton Broner: An African-American “Activist Collector” in Pre-Apartheid South Africa—11th Annual Mary L. Heuser Lecture featuring Christa Clarke, Ph.D.
“After twenty-eight years of desire and determination, I have visited Africa, the land of my forefathers.” So wrote Lida Clanton Broner, an African-American resident of Newark, New Jersey, on her return from a South African journey, funded by savings from a lifetime of work as a domestic and hairstylist. Broner’s trip was motivated by a sense of ancestral heritage, but also her anti-colonialist activism. Her collection was subsequently exhibited in the US in the 1940s, against the broader backdrop of pan-Africanist ideology and the emerging civil rights movement. Dr. Clarke will share her groundbreaking research on Broner’s extraordinary story, which animates the experiences of both South Africans and African Americans during a time of struggle and oppression.
