Becoming 'Multi-Racial': The Young Women's Christian Association in Kenya, 1955-1965

This chapter addresses issues of identity and racial exclusion by looking at Christianity and whiteness at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in the context of late colonial Kenya. Between 1955 and 1965, Kenya YWCA rejected its identity as an organization for white/European women, and became inclusive of African women for the first time. The history of Kenya YWCA written by its last white leader, Vera Harley (1995), is an important source of information about this period in Kenya YWCA’s history. The narrative Harley constructs is an important part of the identity of the organization in the present day. Studying this narrative of ‘race’ and inclusion yields two key insights; firstly, that in late colonial Kenya racial and religious identity were strongly connected, even mutually constitutive. Secondly, women in African contexts have histories of exclusion from Christian organisations. The complex interaction of the history of white/European women’s Christian voluntary action, widely-held prejudices about Africans, and the inconsistent effects of the politics of decolonization, all contributed to the nature and speed of Kenya YWCA’s journey towards racial integration.