Ray E. Phillips

Rev. Ray E. Phillips (1889-1967) was a Congregational minister who in 1918 came to South Africa from the United States with Dora, his wife (1892-1967) to join the American Board Mission in central Johannesburg. During the forty years that the Phillipses spent in South Africa, Ray helped found a number of organizations to assist black South Africans, or to foster racial co-operation. Firmly opposed to segregation, Phillips was involved in the founding of the Bantu Men's Social Centre (1924), the South African Institute for Race Relations (1929), the Johannesburg Coordinating Council for Non-European Welfare Organization, and the Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work (1941), of which he was the director. The Hofmeyr School provided training for black social workers, among whom Winnie Madikizela, before her marriage to Nelson Mandela.[1] Political activists like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu (1912-2003) were members of the Bantu Men's Social Centre, and the African National Congress's Youth League was started on its premises in 1944.