John Langalibalele Dube (22 February 1871 – 11 February 1946) was a South African essayist, philosopher, educator, politician, publisher, editor, novelist and poet. He was the founding president of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which became the African National Congress in 1923. He was an uncle to Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme with whom they founded SANNC along. Dube served as the president of SANNC between 1912 and 1917. He was brought to America by returning missionaries and attended Oberlin Preparatory Academy. He returned to South Africa, where in 1903 he and his first wife, Nokutela Dube, founded a newspaper, what is now Ilanga lase Natal. In 1901 he founded the Ohlange High School based on the Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T. Washington. He also wanted black people to go into business, so in 1903 he founded the isiZulu newspaper Ilanga. In 1930, John Dube published "Shaka's Body Servant." He also wrote about the lives of Zulu rulers, including King Dinuzulu. He was a conservative politician. His ANC was not a militant party of the 1960s, but he never lost sight of two things: human rights, and the need for Africans to stand together. That was the message John Langalibalele Dube was preaching until he died in 1946. Early life John Langalibalele was born in Natal at the Inanda mission station of the American Zulu Mission (AZM), a branch of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, whose Southern African mission churches later merged with sister Congregational mission churches of the London Missionary Society and Congregational Union of South Africa to form the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA). His father, the Rev. James Dube, was one of the first ordained African pastors of the AZM. Dube began his formal education in Inanda and Adams College, Amanzimtoti. The Reverend William Cullen Wilcox was called in to talk to Dube, who was misbehaving at the Adams School. His father James Dube was then the Congregational minister at Inanda. In 1887, the Wilcox family were returning to the United States and John Dube and his mother persuaded the missionary couple to take Dube to America, where he could further his education. The Cullens agreed on the condition that Dube was to maintain himself financially; however, they advised him, and William found him his first work on the road gang when he arrived in America. Dube went to