Es'kia Mphahlele

Es'kia (Ezekiel) Mphahlele was born on December 17, 1919, in the black township of Marabastad, Pretoria. Banned from teaching in South Africa in 1952 for protesting the discriminatory Bantu Education Act, he worked as literary editor for Drum magazine.

Fleeing into exile in 1957, Mphahlele published his celebrated autobiography Down Second Avenue (1959), translated into more than twenty languages. He taught at the University of Ibadan, the University of Nairobi, and the University of Pennsylvania, authoring the foundational critical study The African Image (1962). Defying threats, he returned to South Africa in 1977, founding the first Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand.