chronicles Broner’s remarkable life. Weekend All Things Considered host Tiffany Hanssen spoke with Clarke about Broner’s trip and the art she collected.
In many ways, she was a very ordinary woman. She lived in Newark, N.J., most of her life, where she raised her son, Leroy, and worked as a housekeeper and a hairstylist. But she was also a grassroots activist, and ended up on this remarkable journey to South Africa where she forged ties across the Atlantic with like-minded Africans dedicated to Black liberation.
She traveled by train, by car, by donkey and sometimes on foot. So the journey she made is remarkable on many levels. But most challenging to be a woman alone, a Black woman alone, traveling to South Africa was incredibly challenging in 1938. She had trouble getting a visa. Her visa was rejected initially.
She collected about 150 works of art. They’re rather humble objects: everyday examples of needlework given by women who were forming clubs in South Africa, beadwork from women living in more rural areas, wooden utensils and woven mats from school children. It was intended for public display. And when she returned to Newark in early 1939, she mobilized the collection and had a number of what I call activist exhibitions. Mostly these were exhibitions at places where Black people in the United States were limited, in terms of where they could display art. They were at YMCAs, public libraries, sometimes churches.
Speaking of the book, the title is “The Activist Collector.” We've talked about her activism. Is that really what motivated you to write about her?