Daniel William Alexander was born in 1880 in Port Elizabeth, the son of a West Indian father and an African mother. Ordained as an Anglican minister, he later became leader of the separatist African Orthodox Church, which had its headquarters in America. He was an officer of the Pretoria branch of the African People's Organization (APO) and a member of the Joint Council movement. He was a participant at Non-European Conference and the 1939 European-Bantu Conference.
