Mission to Malawi: Memoir of an African American Peace Corps Volunteer, 1967-1969

Unlike the vast majority of Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s, John Fleming was a young Black man who was assigned to an all-white agricultural project in Malawi, an emerging African country surrounded by White-ruled Southern Rhodesia, Mozambique, and South Africa. John wanted to be a missionary in Africa, but was put off by his encounters with self-serving White missionaries. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements influenced his world view while navigating life in an African country still controlled or greatly influenced by racist Whites.

This memoir is a moving story of coming ＂home＂ to Africa, where the author developed deep friendships with his Malawian neighbors and colleagues. The author relates his first Christmas spent with a Malawian family, where he was served termites; the ordeal of climbing the highest mountain in Malawi; and his battle with thousands of soldier ants. He also describes his experiences in the neighboring countries of Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.

John E. Fleming served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, 1967-69. He spent six years working as a senior fellow at Howard University’s Institute for the Study of Educational Policy (ISEP). In 1980, he was named director of the National Afro-American Museum and Culture Center in Wilberforce, Ohio. He served as its director for a decade, then went on to direct the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. He served as director of planning and development of the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, and as a senior consultant for the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi. In January 2014, he became director of the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee.