The ANC is founded in a Bloemfontein church

On 8 January 1912 chiefs, church ministers, teachers and lawyers from the four provinces and the neighbouring protectorates met in the Wesleyan Church at Waaihoek, Bloemfontein, and founded the South African Native National Congress. John Dube, a school principal and newspaper editor who could not attend, was elected its first president in his absence. The founders wanted one voice for black South Africans against the colour bar that the 1910 Union had written into law. In 1923 the Congress took the name it still carries: the African National Congress.