Showing results by narrator "Rodney Louis Tompkins" in All Categories

Drusilla Dunjee Houston (1876-1941) was a teacher, journalist, and self-taught historian. Inspired by the works of WEB DuBois, Houston undertook a quest to discover African history from an African American perspective. In Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Houston identifies the Kushite civilization of Sudan, with its capital city Meroe, to be the cradle of humanity.

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was an orator of Black Nationalism, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global movement, known as Garveyism. This book, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) was compiled by his wife, Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey, mainly from his speeches. Promoting unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule in Africa and encouraged the political unification of the continent.

Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography can be read as a redemption story echoing many similar voices of its time. Starting from the humiliation he experienced as a slave, he ponders the meaning of identity in a situation that seeks to dehumanize. He furthers his story by expanding on his difficulties in obtaining an education and the need for change in our minds as well as societal structures.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (1887-1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) is a collection of his speeches, setting out his vision of a united Africa. As an early proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, he encouraged a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora. Garvey deplored the view of poverty as a virtue and encourages Blacks to be empowered in every sphere of their lives.

Harvey Johnson was a Baptist minister form Baltimore, Maryland. In his book The Hamite, he investigates the ancient people of the Near East.

Josiah Henson (1789-1883) was born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland. He and his family escaped slavery in a long walk from Kentucky to Ohio. They were helped by Native Americans in the Ohio wilderness and sympathetic boatmen who carry them across Lake Erie to Buffalo, New York. In Canada, Henson organized the Afro-Canadian community and became involved in projects that emphasized independence from white patronage.

John Newton was the master of a slave ship, later becoming a beloved Anglican priest and an ardent abolitionist. His conversion to Christianity began in 1748, and in 1764 he was accepted in the priesthood. However, it took him a while to denounce the slave trade as the pamphlet "Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade" was only published in 1787. Its impact was immediate and it became quite influential. Graphically describing the horrors of the slave trade, the publication is a moving confession of repentance for the author’s part in the hideous trade in human beings.

Twenty-five years after its original publication, Slave Religion remains a classic in the study of African American history and religion. Using a variety of first and secondhand sources - some objective, some personal, all riveting - Raboteau analyzes the transformation of the African religions into evangelical Christianity. He presents the narratives of the slaves themselves, as well as missionary reports, travel accounts, folklore, Black autobiographies, and the journals of White observers to describe the day-to-day religious life in the slave communities.

In 1802, Richard Drake (1790-1857) at the age of 12, joined his uncle on a slaving voyage between Benin and Brazil. It was the beginning of his 50 years’ career as a slave trader. Revelations of a Slave Smuggler, published posthumously in 1860, tells his stories including those of journeys to the interior of Africa, slave hunts, gold prospecting in West Africa, his capture by an African tribe, lion hunting, marriage to an African woman, visits with African rulers, slave markets, and the West Indies trade.

Twelve Years a Slave is the 1853 narrative of former slave Solomon Northup. He was born free in New York and kidnapped and sold into slavery. It was famously adapted for film in 2013.

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass covers the life of the prominent abolitionist during and after the Civil War. Here, Douglass provides a fuller account of his escape from slavery and the underground railway to freedom. It includes his recollections of presidents Garfield and Lincoln, Johnson and Garfield, and an account of his service as Marshall of the District of Columbia.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States. Washington came from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. Character Building (1902) is a collection of talks on self-development given to students and faculty at the Tuskegee Institute, of which he was leader. The author stresses the importance of developing oneself for life-long success.

Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and author. He was one of the first three black people admitted to Harvard Medical School. Delany dreamed of establishing a settlement in West Africa and visited Liberia, a United States colony founded by the American Colonization Society. He was a prolific writer, and his book The Origin and Objects of Ancient Freemasonry, Its Introduction Into the United States, and Legitimacy Among Colored Men was published 1853.

In his 1920 book The Jews of Africa, Mendelssohn attempts to chart the separate and progressive histories of the Jews in the different parts of Africa where they lived since their expulsion from the land by the Romans. He succeeds in compiling a narrative of a large part of the histories of the Jews of Africa during the centuries following the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem.

Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) was a diplomat, educator, writer and politician. Born in the West Indies, he migrated to Liberia in 1851. Blyden’s writings on pan-Africanism were influential in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the two countries founded in the time of slavery for the resettlement of free blacks from the United Kingdom and the United States. Blyden believed that Zionism was a model for what he termed Ethiopianism, and that African-Americans could return to Africa and redeem it.

The Mysterious and Prophetic History of Esau Considered (1837) by J H Heath examines the numerous biblical prophecies on Edom and Esau. Drawing on the books of Exodus, Daniel, and Revelation, the author first looks at the history of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their families, to identify Ishmael and Esau with Edom.

The Jamaican orator and entrepreneur Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (1887-1940) preached success to the African diaspora. He believed that attaining economic, cultural, and political success would free African Americans in this life. Identifying integrity of character as the first step toward achievement, Garvey promoted capitalism as the means to establish African Americans as an independent group.

Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) was a Welsh explorer and journalist. Famous for his meeting with the missionary and explorer David Livingstone, Stanley searched for the source of the Nile as an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium. In Origin of the Negro Race, he attempts an ethnographic description of the continent’s people beginning with Egypt and the North.

Garnet’s 1848 address to the Female Benevolent Society of Troy, New York, was published as The Past and the Present Condition and the Destiny of the Colored Race. In it, he elaborated on his convictions that the ancient Egyptians were Africans, that the Nubian warriors of Kush were celebrated by Homer, that the Song of Solomon was addressed to an African woman, that Moses’ wife was Nubian, and that Hannibal, Euclid, Origen, and Augustine were of African ancestry.

Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923) was an editor, historian, and prominent theologian of his time who founded The Christian Recorder, an early African American newspaper. In his 1895 book The Color of Solomon, he contends that King Solomon of the Bible did not belong to the white race.