100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
Erschienen am 24. Oktober 2017
496 Seiten
978-0-307-90872-8 (ISBN)
Beschreibung
The first edition of Joel Augustus Rogers's now legendary 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, published in 1934, was billed as "A Negro 'Believe It or Not.'" Rogers's little book was priceless because he was delivering enlightenment and pride, steeped in historical research, to a people too long starved on the lie that they were worth nothing. For African Americans of the Jim Crow era, Rogers's was their first black history teacher. But Rogers was not always shy about embellishing the "facts" and minimizing ambiguity; neither was he above shock journalism now and then.
With élan and erudition-and with winning enthusiasm-Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Roger's work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African-American history in question-and-answer format. Among the one hundred questions: Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history's wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry? Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there? Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history? Where was the first Underground Railroad? Who was the first black American woman to be a self-made millionaire? Which black man made many of our favorite household products better?
Here is a surprising, inspiring, sometimes boldly mischievous-all the while highly instructive and entertaining-compendium of historical curiosities intended to illuminate the sheer complexity and diversity of being "Negro" in the world.
(With full-color illustrations throughout.)
With élan and erudition-and with winning enthusiasm-Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Roger's work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African-American history in question-and-answer format. Among the one hundred questions: Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history's wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry? Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there? Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history? Where was the first Underground Railroad? Who was the first black American woman to be a self-made millionaire? Which black man made many of our favorite household products better?
Here is a surprising, inspiring, sometimes boldly mischievous-all the while highly instructive and entertaining-compendium of historical curiosities intended to illuminate the sheer complexity and diversity of being "Negro" in the world.
(With full-color illustrations throughout.)
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Henry Louis Gates
100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
Buch
10/2017
Pantheon
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HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored twenty-one books and created seventeen documentary films, including Wonders of the African World, African American Lives, Faces of America, Black in Latin America, Black American Since MLK: And Still I Rise, and Finding Your Roots, whose fourth season in currently in production with PBS. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross-which he wrote, executive produced, and hosted-earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program-Long Form, as well as a Peabody Award, and Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, and an NAACP Image Award. Gate's latest film is the six-hour PBS documentary Africa's Great Civilizations.
Inhalt
- Intro
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1. Which journalist was among the first to bring black history facts to the masses?
- 2. How many Africans were taken to the United States during the entire history of the slave trade?
- 3. Who was the first African to arrive in America?
- 4. Who was the first black saint?
- 5. Who was the first black president in North America?
- 6. Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe?
- 7. Who was the first black explorer of the North American Southwest?
- 8. Which slave literally wrote his way to freedom?
- 9. What was the first black town in North America?
- 10. Who was George Washington's runaway slave?
- 11. Who was the first black person in the United States to lead a "back to Africa" effort?
- 12. Who was the first black person to see the baby Jesus?
- 13. Where was the first black town in what is now the United States?
- 14. What happened to the "forty acres and a mule" that former slaves were promised?
- 15. Were slaves actually eaten by dogs?
- 16. Where was the first Underground Railroad?
- 17. What was the second Middle Passage?
- 18. How much did the cotton industry shape American history and the lives of enslaved Africans?
- 19. How much African ancestry does the average African American have?
- 20. Who originated the concept of the "talented tenth" black leadership class?
- 21. Who was the first African-American fighter pilot?
- 22. Did black people own slaves? If so, why?
- 23. How did Harriet Tubman become a legend?
- 24. When did black literature begin to address African-American sexuality?
- 25. Is most of what we believe about the Underground Railroad true?
- 26. Did Russia's Peter the Great adopt an African man as his son?
- 27. Were Alexander Pushkin's African roots important to him?
- 28. Was Jackie Robinson court-martialed?
- 29. What were the largest slave rebellions in America?
- 30. What were the biggest acts of betrayal within the enslaved community?
- 31. What is one of the most novel ways a slave devised to escape bondage?
- 32. Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history?
- 33. Were there any successful slavery escapes by sea?
- 34. How was black support enlisted for World War II, when the armed services were segregated?
- 35. How did the Black Sambo memorabilia that is collected today come to be?
- 36. Who was Plessy in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case?
- 37. What is Juneteenth?
- 38. Who was the first black American woman to be a self-made millionaire?
- 39. Did black combatants fight in the Battle of Gettysburg?
- 40. Before Emancipation, didn't most free blacks live in the northern half of America?
- 41. Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there?
- 42. How did the son of a former slave defy the color bar to become a wealthy fixture of European nightlife during the Jazz Age?
- 43. Which massacre resulted in a Supreme Court decision limiting the federal government's ability to protect black Americans from racial targeting?
- 44. Which episode of racial violence destroyed the community known as the "Black Wall Street"?
- 45. How could integrating information about the fight for civil rights into K-12 curricula better educate our children and foster a real conversation on race?
- 46. Which civil rights leader and gay barrier-breaker was kept in the shadows by the civil rights movement establishment?
- 47. Did Martin Luther King, Jr., improvise in the "Dream" speech?
- 48. Which enslaved African managed to press his case for freedom all the way to the White House?
- 49. Who was history's wealthiest person?
- 50. Who was the first black poet in the Western world?
- 51. Who was the founder of Chicago?
- 52. What's the real story of the legendary mixed-race slave trader Joel Rogers called "Mongo John"?
- 53. How did the story of Solomon Northup, the author of Twelve Years a Slave, first become public?
- 54. Who was the first black man to serve in the U.S. Senate?
- 55. Which black governor was almost a senator?
- 56. Which regiment of black soldiers returning after World War I received a hero's welcome in New York City?
- 57. Who were the African Americans in the Kennedy administration?
- 58. When did African-American women hit their stride in professional achievement?
- 59. Who were the black passengers on the doomed Titanic voyage?
- 60. Which former slave became a deputy U.S. marshal and a renowned symbol of law and order in the Wild West?
- 61. Who were the black people killed in the raid on Harpers Ferry?
- 62. What myth of eternal youth in Africa inspired Europeans for centuries?
- 63. How did black soldiers come to fight in the American Civil War?
- 64. Which black man engaged a Founding Father in a debate about racial equality?
- 65. How were Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela linked?
- 66. Did Lincoln really free the slaves?
- 67. How did Black History Month come into being?
- 68. What was the original color of the mythical beauty Andromeda?
- 69. How often were enslaved Americans able to tell their stories?
- 70. What started the black newspaper industry in America?
- 71. What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry?
- 72. Who was the first American-born black person to draw crowds using sleight of hand-and voice?
- 73. Who was the first black actor to play the role of Shakespeare's tortured Moor?
- 74. Who was the patron saint of African slaves and their descendants?
- 75. Was a black slave to blame for the Salem witch trials?
- 76. What's the truth about many African-American families having a Native American ancestor?
- 77. Which pioneering play introduced mainstream American audiences to the dynamics undergirding the civil rights movement?
- 78. What role did Lord Mansfield's mixed-race great-niece, Dido Elizabeth Belle, play in his famous decision on slavery in England?
- 79. Who was the first African-American writer to investigate and report the wrongdoings of a world leader?
- 80. Who were the first notable African Americans who stepped into America's institutions of higher learning?
- 81. What was Freedom's Fort, and how does it relate to Memorial Day?
- 82. Which French general under Napoléon had African ancestry and was a forebear to two French literary greats?
- 83. Which famous nineteenth-century French author had African ancestry?
- 84. Which Zulu king led his men to victory over British invaders and mounted warfare that killed a French "prince"?
- 85. Why was the summer of 1964 pivotal in the fight for civil rights?
- 86. Which civil rights warrior received numerous telephone calls from the U.S. president during the fight to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
- 87. What happened to Argentina's black population?
- 88. Which event in black history took place in what is now Iraq?
- 89. Did black people engage in piracy during its heyday in the Americas?
- 90. How did the shattering of the color barrier for Rhodes scholarships forever change the black arts movement?
- 91. Which black female poet owned a garden house that became a popular home-away-from-home down south for the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance?
- 92. When President Abraham Lincoln met with free black leaders in 1862, what did he propose?
- 93. Which black justices broke the color barrier at the federal court level?
- 94. Who buried the war dead from the Battle of Gettysburg?
- 95. What did Malcolm X do at Oxford University?
- 96. Which black man made many of our favorite household products better?
- 97. Which twentieth-century black actor played roles of all races during a time when Hollywood had few roles for black actors?
- 98. Who were the first black boxing champions?
- 99. Who were the key scholars responsible for the discipline of black history?
- 100. What are the most important facts to know about American slavery?
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Illustration Credits
- About the Author
