After being trained at Moody Bible Institute, Margaret L. Clapper joined Africa Inland Mission in 1938 and sailed for the Belgian Congo in 1939. She worked at a girls school and home until 1950, when she was assigned to serve among the pygmies in Biasiko while also teaching in a Bible school. Pygmies are notable for their shortness - Clapper, herself a short woman, is only slightly taller. Clapper labored among them for the decade of the '50s until the Simba Rebellion in 1960, when she was relocated to Kenya until 1966. Returning to the renamed Zaire, she again taught in several Bible schools until her retirement in 1980.

The Archives has numerous photos of missionaries, the most significant of which show them in the environment in which they worked and with the people they served. It is those pictures, like the two on this page, that help us to make concrete their experience and influence.

The two photographs featured here are a glimpse into Clapper's life and ministry, Africa Inland Mission, East Africa and Evangelical missions in the 1940s. Collection 81 (records of Africa Inland Mission) is the source for these images. Clapper's oral history interviews recorded by the Archives are described in Collection 480 (interview of Margaret L. Clapper), audio tapes and the transcript for the first tape available online.