Mabel Dove Danquah

Mabel Dove Danquah (1905[1]–1984) was a Gold Coast-born journalist, political activist[2]and creative writer, one of the earliest women in West Africa to work in these fields.[3] As Francis Elsbend Kofigah notes in relation to Ghana's literary pioneers, "before the emergence of such strong exponents of literary feminism as Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, there was Mabel Dove Danquah, the trail-blazing feminist."[4] She used various pseudonyms in her writing for newspapers from the 1930s: "Marjorie Mensah" in The Times of West Africa; "Dama Dumas" in the African Morning Post; "Ebun Alakija" in the Nigerian Daily Times; and "Akosua Dzatsui" in the Accra Evening News.[3] Entering politics in the 1950s before Ghana's independence, she became the first woman to be elected a member of any African legislative assembly.[5]

Mabel Dove Danquah
BornMabel Ellen Dove
1905 (1905)
Accra, Ghana
Died1984 (1985)
OccupationJournalist, politician and writer
Notable worksThe Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for Mr Shaw (1934);
Selected Writings of a Pioneer West African Feminist (2004)

Education and early years

Mabel Ellen Dove was born in Accra to Eva Buckman. a businesswoman in Osu, and Francis (Frans) Dove (1869–1949),[6] a lawyer from Sierra Leone who was the first President of the Gold Coast Bar.[3] With her sisters, Mabel at the age of six was taken to Annie Walsh Memorial School in Freetown, Sierra Leone,[7] and received further education in Anglican Convent (Bury St. Edmunds) and St. Michael's College England, where she took a secretarial course, against the wishes of her father.[8][9] She was sent back to Freetown, and while there she helped set up a women's cricket club[10], participated in the local dramatics society and read extensively, before returning at the age of 21 to the Gold Coast.[11] She found employment as a shorthand-typist with Elder Dempster for eight years, then transferred to G. B. Olivant, before going to work as a manager with the trading company of A. G. Leventis.[11]

Journalism

She started writing for The Times of West Africa, Ghana's first daily newspaper, which was founded and owned by Dr J. B. Danquah and strongly advocated fundamental human rights while denouncing foreign domination.[12] Through the column "Ladies [later Women's] Corner by Marjorie Mensah" (1931–34),[3] her articles won her great public popularity: "she dared women to break with form, to derive inspiration from the suffragists, to denounce imperialism, and to fight for their rights."[3][13] She also won the admiration of the paper's proprietor, whom she eventually married in 1933.[1] In 1939, she gave radio talks in support of the war effort.[14]

After The Times of West Africa ceased to function, she went on to write for the African Morning Post (1935–40), the Nigerian Daily Times (1936–37), the Accra Evening News (1950–1960s) and the Daily Graphic (1952). When in 1951 she took on the editorship of the Accra Evening News — the paper of the Convention People's Party (CPP), founded in 1948[15] — she was the second woman ever to edit a newspaper in Ghana. Although the appointment ended after five months because of disagreement with CPP leader Kwame Nkrumah over editorial methods,[8] she remained loyal to Nkrumah and the party.[16]

Politics

Her involvement with politics started after Kwame Nkrumah founded his Convention People's Party (CPP), in 1949, and she became a member of staff of the nationalist Accra Evening News,[10] joining the campaign for the end of British rule and immediate self-government for the Gold Coast. In the general election of 1954, she was committed to organising women for the CPP, and she was subsequently put up as a CPP candidate for Ga Rural constituency, which she won. Her election made her the first female member of the Legislative Assembly of the Gold Coast.[17]

Creative writing

She was a prolific author over a period of four decades — her published collections of short stories include The Happenings of the Night (1931), The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for Mr Shaw (1934), Anticipation (1947), The Torn Veil (1947), Payment (1947), Invisible Scar (1966) and Evidence of Passion (1969) — until her literary career was curtailed by her blindness in 1972.[3] Her work is anthologised in collections including Langston Hughes′ An African Treasury: Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems (1960), and Margaret Busby's Daughters of Africa (1992).[18] A collection of her work, Selected Writings of a Pioneer West African Feminist (edited by Stephanie Newell and Audrey Gadzekpo), was published in 2004.[19]

Personal life

In September 1933[20] Dove married the political statesman and historian J. B. Danquah and they had a son, Vladimir.[12] However, the marriage "did not survive Danquah's prolonged absence during the period 1934–36 when he was in England as secretary of the Gold Coast delegation" and the couple divorced in the mid-1940s.[11]

Selected bibliography
  • The Happenings of the Night (1931)
  • The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for Mr Shaw (1934)
  • Anticipation (1947)
  • The Torn Veil (1947)
  • Payment (1947)
  • Invisible Scar (1966)
  • Evidence of Passion (1969)
  • Selected Writings of a Pioneer West African Feminist (edited by Stephanie Newell and Audrey Gadzekpo). Nottingham: Trent Editions, 2004. ISBN 1 84233 097 7.

Legacy

Dove's satire of George Bernard Shaw's The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932), which she titled The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for Mr Shaw, was included in the British Library's 2015–16 exhibition West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song.[21][22]

Further reading
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References
  1. "Heroes Of Our Time — Ms Mabel Ellen Dove", Graphic Online (via Modern Ghana), 13 April 2007. (Some sources mistakenly give her date of birth as 2010.)
  2. Asiedu, Kwasi Gyamfi (16 March 2019). "Africa has forgotten the women leaders of its independence struggle". Quartz Africa. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
  3. Audrey Gadzekpo, "Dove-Danquah, Mabel (1905–84, Ghanaian journalist, short-story writer", in Eugene Benson and L. W. Conolly (eds), Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1994), 2nd edition, Routledge, 2005, pp. 371–72.
  4. Kofigah, Francis Elsbend, "The Writing of Mabel Dove Danquah" (thesis) Archived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 1996.
  5. Margaret Busby, "Mabel Dove-Danquah", in Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent (1992), 1993, p. 223.
  6. Nigel Browne-Davies, "Lieutenant Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon: A Sierra Leonean Medical Officer in the First World War", The Journal of Sierra Leone Studies, Autumn 2014, p. 4, note 8.
  7. LaRay Denzer, "Gender & Decolonization: A Study of Three Women in West African Public Life", in Andrea Cornwall, Readings in Gender in Africa, International African Institute in association with James Currey/Indiana University Press, 2005, p. 217.
  8. Kathleen Sheldon, "Dove Danquah, Mabel (1905/1910–1984)", Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, Scarecrow Press, 2005, p. 66.
  9. Ghana, News. "Mabel Dove-Danquah was an exceptional lady". Retrieved 2020-04-09.
  10. "Mabel Dove-Danquah: A Trailblazing Author, Feminist, Politician, Activist & Journalist". www.ghanaweb.com. 17 October 2015. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
  11. Denzer, "Gender & Decolonization" (2005), p. 218.
  12. "Flagbearers of Ghana: Dr J. B. Danquah (1896–1965)", Ghana Nation, 15 November 2011.
  13. Mabel Dove, "On Suffrage in West Africa (July 1931), in Maureen Moynagh and Nancy Forestell (eds), Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Volume 1: Transnational Collaborations and Crosscurrents, University of Toronto Press, 2012.
  14. Wendell P. Holbrook, "British Propaganda and the Mobilization of the Gold Coast War Effort, 1939–1945", Journal of African History 26, 4, World War II and Africa (1985), p. 354.
  15. C. L. R. James, "Kwame Nkrumah: Founder of African Emancipation", in Black World, July 1972 (pp. 4–10), p. 7.
  16. Denzer, "Gender & Decolonization" (2005), p. 220.
  17. Josephine Dawuni, "Danquah, Mabel Dove", in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Emmanuel Akyeampong and Steven J. Niven (eds), Dictionary of African Biography, OUP USA, 2012, pp. 165–167.
  18. "Mabel Dove-Danquah" at Goodreads.
  19. "A Must Read: Mabel Dove: Selected Writings of a Pioneer West Africa Feminist", Ghana Rising, 6 April 2013.
  20. Jinny Kathleen Prais, "Imperial Travelers: The Formation of West African Urban Culture, Identity, and Citizenship in London and Accra, 1925–1935" (dissertation), University of Michigan, 2008, p. 253, note 526.
  21. Stephanie Newell and Marion Wallace, "Speaking out: political protest and print cultures in West Africa", British Library Newsletter.
  22. Thembi Mutch, "From Timbuktu to Trinidad: British Library launches dazzling West Africa show", The Guardian, 16 October 2015.
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