At the start of the twentieth century, newly urbanized South Africans struggled with mainstream missionary education and its associated oppression, segregation, displacement, and not least, disillusionment. They shared far-reaching educational aspirations in the rapidly growing, cosmopolitan Johannesburg in the aftermath of the 1899-1902 war. Vusumuzi Kumalo's insightful narrative relates how mission-educated graduates--despite their profoundly differing linguistic and regional backgrounds--came together to create the independent education movement, and how their determination led to the creation of the Wilberforce Institute, one of the first major independent African schools in segregationist South Africa. CONTENTS: • Foreword--Dr. S.M. Motsuenyane. • Introduction. • The Beginnings of Western Missionary Education in South Africa. • Education, the State, and the Demand for Labor. • Skilled Workmen, Honest Clerks, and Reliable Domestic Servants. • The "School People" Resist and Start Asserting African Independence, 1880s-1890s. • The Ethiopianists: Struggle for Religious and Educational Independence. • The USA and African Methodist Episcopal Church Connections. • Dissatisfaction with White Missionary Education. • Land Rights for Africans in the Transvaal Colony, 1905. • Land and Opportunity: The Formation of Evaton, 1905. • The Long Walk of J.Z. Tantsi. • Growth Under Principal Tolityi Magaya, 1917-1924. • "Up From Slavery." • "Born for Leadership": The Eva Morake Years, 1934-1936. • Dr. Alfred B. Xuma Dips into His Own Pockets. • Doing Wright: The Reconstruction of Wilberforce, 1938-1940. • The Tenures of Dr. Jacob Nhlapo and Dr. Rev. Josephus Coan. • Dr. Nhlapo on National Duty. • End of an Era: The Arrival of Bantu Education, 1948-1955. • The Wilberforce Legacy: Alumni During and After Apartheid.