Dr. John Henrik Clarke was born January 1, 1915
in Union Springs, Alabama and died July 16, 1998 in New York City.
His family came from a long line of sharecroppers.
The following article by excerpted from larger work originally
published; Los Angeles Times, 3/03/1991, Part E, Page 1,
"Elder Statesmen An Era Is Passing for Five Authors Known for Reclaiming
the Role of Blacks in History," by Yemi Toure
Clarke noticed that although many
bible stories "unfolded in Africa...I saw no African people in the printed and
illustrated Sunday school lessons," he wrote in 1985. "I began to suspect at
this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the
true history of African people the world over began."
That search took him to libraries,
museums, attics, archives and collections in Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America
and Africa.
What he found was that the history
of black people is worldwide; that "the first light of human consciousness and the
world's first civilizations were in Africa"; that the so called Dark Ages were dark
only for Europe and that some African nations at the time were larger than any in Europe;
that as Africa sends its children to Europe to study because that is where the best
universities are, early Greece once sent its children to Africa to study because that was
where the best universities were; and that slavery, although devastating was neither the
beginning nor the end of Black people's impact on the world.
Clarke gathered his findings into
books on such figures as the early 20th century mass movement leader Marcus Garvey, into
articles with titles like "Africa in the Conquest of Spain" and "Harlem as
mecca and New Jerusalem," and many books including American Heritage's two volume
"History of Africa."
While he was teaching at Hunter College in
New York and at Cornell University in the 1980's, Clarke's lesson plans became well known
for their thoroughness. They are so filled with references and details that the Schomburg
Library in Harlem asked for copies. Clarke plans to provide them, he said, "so that
50 years from now, when people have a hard time locating my grave, they won't have a hard
time locating my lessons."
In 1985, the year of his retirement,
the newest branch of the Cornell University Library- a 60 seat, 9,000 volume facility- was
named the "John Henrik Clarke Africana Library."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke's
"A Great and Mighty Walk," an excellent historical film narrated by actor Wesley Snipes. View the entire film here.
John
Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History: Africalogical
Quest for Decolonization and Sovereignty Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Africa World Press; First edition (December 2, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1592216277
ISBN-13: 978-1592216277
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
In the late 1960s through the late 1980s, the late John
Henrik Clarke (1915-1998) was one of the foremost architects of
the emerging discipline of Africana Studies/Africalogy as
Professor of African World History in the Department of Black
and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City
University of New York and as the Carter G. Woodson
Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell
University's Africana Studies and Research Center.
The study explores Clarke's development and conceptualization
of Afrikan World History by examining his intellectual
influences and training, his approach to teaching Afrikan World
History, his notions regarding Afrikan agency and Afrikan
humanity, his explorations of themes of Pan Afrikanism and
national sovereignty, his ideas concerning the relevance of
Afrikan culture in historical perspective, and his legacy in
Afrikan intellectualism and culture, including his contribution
to the Afrocentric paradigm that is the core of the discipline
of Africana Studies/Africalogy.
As an academician and intellectual, Clarke emerged as one of
the leading theorists of Afrikan liberation and the uses of
Afrikan history as a foundation and grounding for liberation.
Under Clarke's formulation liberation was defined not simply as
freedom from European domination, but fundamentally as the
restoration of Afrikan sovereignty. He explored history's
utility in moving an oppressed and subordinated people from a
position of subjugation on multiple levels to full status as a
self-sustaining, self-defining, self-directed, free, and
independent people on a global stage.
Further, the study examines the influence of indigenous
Afrikan intellectualism in the United States in Afrikan cultural
and intellectual history. Although a leader among European
academy-trained Afrikan intellectuals who joined the European
academy largely beginning in the 1970s, Clarke's education and
training were the product of a movement for the indigenization
of Afrikan academic intellectualism in Harlem of the 1930s that
can be traced back to the early nineteenth century. This is the
first extensive critical examination of Clarke as an exemplar of
indigenous intellectualism in Afrikan culture in the United
States.
About the Author
Ahati N. N. Toure is Assistant Professor of Africana
History and Black Studies at Delaware State University. He
earned his Ph.D. in American History at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln and an MA in Africana Studies at the State
University of New York at Albany. He is the author of
several essays exploring subjects in Africalogy and in
Africana History, including 'John Henrik Clarke and Issues
in Afrikan Historiography: Implications of Pan Afrikan
Nationalism in Interpreting the Afrikan Experience in the
United States' in Pan African Nationalism in the Americas:
The Life and Times of John Henrik Clarke published by Africa
World Press.
Release Year: 1996 Cast: Wesley Snipes Director: Saint Clair Bourne Categories: Historical Film Running Time: 134minutes
Grand Jury Prize/Best Documentary,
UrbanWorld
Film Festival
This video chronicles the life and times of the noted African-American
historian, scholar and Pan-African activist John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998).
Both a biography of Clarke himself and an overview of 5,000 years of African
history, the film offers a provocative look at the past through the eyes of
a leading proponent of an Afrocentric view of history. From ancient Egypt
and Africa's other great empires, Clarke moves through Mediterranean
borrowings, the Atlantic slave trade, European colonization, the development
of the Pan-African movement, and present-day African-American history.
'...compelling'this look at an important though little-known African-American
leader deserves to be seen. Recommended for large black history collections.'
- Video Librarian
'Clarke's insights are challenging, thoughtful, and excellent starting
points for class discussion. The work, like its subject, is organized,
scholarly, and substantial." - School Library Journal
"...a veritable tour de force, plotting history from Africa's ethnographic
presence, dating back to the early Egyptian dynasties to the Million Man
March...The film is equal parts Baptist sermon and history." - New York
Amsterdam News
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of
European Capitalism Click to order via Amazon
ISBN: 1886433186 Format: Paperback, 128pp Pub. Date: August 2002 Publisher: A & B Distributors
ISBN: 0803718047,
Format: Hardcover, 80pp
Pub. Date: November 1995,
Publisher: Dial
Age Range: Young Adult
The Middle Passage is the name given to one of the most tragic ordeals in
history: the cruel and terrifying journey of enslaved Africans across the
Atlantic Ocean. In this seminal work, master artist Tom Feelings tells the
complete story of this horrific diaspora in sixty-four extraordinary
narrative paintings. Achingly real, they draw us into the lives of the
millions of African men, women, and children who were savagely torn from
their beautiful homelands, crowded into disease-ridden "death ships," and
transported under nightmarish conditions to the so-called New World. An
introduction by noted historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke traces the roots of
the Atlantic slave trade and gives a vivid summary of its four centuries of
brutality. The Middle Passage reaches us on a visceral level. No one
can experience it and remain unmoved. But while we absorb the horror of
these images, we also can find some hope in them. They are a tribute to the
survival of the human spirit, and the humanity won by the survivors of the
Middle Passage belongs to us all.
ISBN: 0865432708
Format: Hardcover, 450pp
Pub. Date: January 1992
Publisher: Africa World Press
Essays focusing on the African and African American freedom struggle in
the African world, as well as detailed discussion of the uncompleted
revolutions of five monumental African leaders.
ISBN: 0374523541
Format: Paperback, 421pp
Pub. Date: December 1992
Publisher: Hill and Wang
The success of John Henrik Clarke's American Negro Short Stories,
first published in 1966, affirmed the vitality and importance of black
fiction. Now this expanded edition of that best-selling book, with a new
title, offers the reader thirty-one stories included in the original--from
Charles W. Chesnutt and Paul Laurence Dunbar in the late nineteenth century
to the rich and productive work of the Harlem Renaissance: writers like Zora
Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright; the World War II
accomplishments of Chester Himes, Frank Yerby, and many others; and the
later fiction of James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, and LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri
Baraka). Seven additional contributions round out a century of great stories
with the work of Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Eugenia Collier, Jennifer
Jordan, James Allan McPherson, Rosemarie Robotham, and Alice Walker. Dr.
Clarke has included a new introduction to this 1993 edition, and a short
biography of each contributor.
An eye-opening account of the great black personalities of world history.
In this first volume: outstanding blacks of Asia and Africa, and
historical figures before Christ -- including Akhenaton, Aesop, Hannibal,
Cleopatra, Zenobia, Askia the Great, the Mahdi, Samuel Adjai Crowther, and
many more.
World's Great Men of Color is a comprehensive account of the great Black
personalities in world history. J. A. Rogers was one of the first Black
scholars to devote most of his life to researching the lives of hundreds of
men and women of color. This first volume is a convenient reference;
equipped with a comprehensive introduction, it treats all aspects of
recorded Black history. J. A. Rogers's book is vital reading for everyone
who wants a fuller and broader understanding of the great personalities who
have shaped our world.
The companion volume covers the great Blacks of Europe, South and Central
America, the West Indies, and the United States, including Marcus Garvey,
Robert Browning, Dom Pedro, Alexandre Dumas, Joachim Murat, Aleksander
Sergeevich Pushkin, Alessandro de' Medici, St. Benedict the Moor, and many
others.
"This is not just another book on African history. It is, in my
opinion, one of the best books that has so far been written on the subject."
'from the Introduction by John Henrik Clarke
"The picture we get today of
Africa in past ages from the history taught in our schools is that Africans
were savages and that, although Europeans invaded their lands and made
slaves of them, they were in a way conferring a great favor on them, since
they brought to them the blessings of Christian civilization," writes John
G. Jackson.
With brilliantly objective scholarship, Jackson obliterates
that picture and presents one infinitely more rich, colorful, and varied.
This book challenges all the standard approaches to African history, from
the dawn of prehistory to the resurgent Africa of today. It will challenge
the parochial historian, devastate the theoretical pretensions of white
supremacists, and expand intellectual horizons. It is a fascinating book to
be read and reread by the layman and the scholar for pleasure and knowledge.
Dr. John Henrik Clarke: The Million Man March & Fake Leadership (Part 2)
The Harlem Writers Guild is a community of writers of African descent whose
mission is to preserve the experience of black people in the written word.
The Guild was founded as a writers workshop in the "Village" of Harlem in New
York City in 1950. The founding members included: Dr. John Henrik Clarke,
Rosa Guy,
John Oliver Killens,
Walter Christmas.
John
Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History: Africalogical
Quest for Decolonization and Sovereignty
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of
European Capitalism
The
Middle Passage : White Ships/ Black Cargo
Master
Teacher - John Henrik Clarke: The Early Years
My
Life in Search of Africa
Africans
at the Crossroad: Notes on an African World Revolution
Malcolm
X: The Man and His Times
Black
American Short Stories: 
African People in World
History (Black Classic Press Contemporary Lecture)
World's Great Men of Color, Vol.
1
World's Great Men of Color, Volume II
Introduction to African Civilizations