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

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.

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by the author and playwright William Wells Brown. Set in the early 19th century, it is the story of Clotel and her sister Althesa, who are fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. It is considered the first novel published by an African American and explores the destructive effects of slavery on African American families, the difficult lives of mixed-race people, and the degraded and immoral condition of the relationship between master and slave.

James Morris Webb argues that the Black man was the father of civilization, born in the land of Egypt, and that the different branches of science and art were simply transmitted to other races, which, as the ages have rolled by have only been enlarged - and to some extent improved upon. The narrative is rich in quotes from the Bible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reverend Richard A. Morrisey (born 1858) was an African-American biblical scholar, a Doctor of Divinity, and the pastor of a number of churches in the South and in Pennsylvania. In 1915, he published Bible History of the Negro, with the hope of inspiring a greater desire to read the Bible which he describes as giving "the Negro a place among the foremost races of the world, in wealth, in education, in honor and in religion, a history to which every member of the race may point with great pride and profound gratitude to Almighty God today”.

Dr. William Lucius Hunter, MD (1850-1915) was a clergyman of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church and a physician who graduated at the University of Buffalo in 1890. In his 1901 book Jesus Christ Had Negro Blood in His Veins, Dr. Hunter researches scripture in order to fight segregation and abuse. He identifies Canaanites as being black and claimed that several important Jewish figures and ancestors of Jesus had children by this group of people. Hunter came to the conclusion that Jesus had black ancestry dating back to Ham, the son of Noah.

David Walker, the son of an enslaved man and a free black woman, was an entrepreneur, abolitionist, author and anti-slavery activist. In 1829, he published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a radical call for black solidarity and resistance to slavery. It raised awareness of the abuses of slavery, encouraged pride in its black readers and offered hope that change would eventually come. Being a radical anti-slavery document, it caused a stir upon publication, as it called upon readers to take an active role in fighting their oppression, regardless of the risk.

Historical Sketches of the Ancient Negro (1920) by Edward and Josephine sought to correct the image of their African ancestors in the perception of Afro-Americans. The authors explore the ancient history of Cush, Ethiopia, Nubia and other African kingdoms, relying on Biblical text and other primary sources to retell the story of black Africans from an Afrocentric point of view, and providing an important early contribution to Ancient African history.

Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835 - 1923) was an African American clergyman and editor. He served as a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1886, and founded The Christian Recorder, an important early African American newspaper. In The Negro in Holy Writ, published in 1900, Tanner shows that the African people are described in the Bible. He argues that the ancient Cushim were the ancient Ethiopians, and that they were Negroes. The book provides evidence for the unity of all mankind.

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

A rivetting account of the western pioneers and their journeys across the wildlands in the early years of the 19th century. Travelling from the east to Pacific Coast held many dangers. The narrative describes those who traveled with him and many encounters with Indian tribes.

Robert Benjamin Lewis (1802 - 1858) was an African American and Native American author, inventor, and entrepreneur. In the ethnological work Light and Truth, Lewis claims that Adam and Eve were people of color, as were the Egyptians and many great figures of the ancient world, including Julius Caesar and Plato. Denouncing notions of white superiority, he asserts that all humans have a common origin, and pointed to a shared cultural history between Africans and Native Americans.

Jesse Max Barber, born in Blackstock, South Carolina, to former slave parents, was a journalist, dentist, and civil rights leader. His literary career began in 1903 while attending Virginia Union University in Richmond. In this work, The Negro of the Earlier World, Barber contends that a race without traditions and without history is most likely to be a race without backbone and without self-respect.

View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America is an 1823 book by Ethan Smith, a Congregationalist minister, who argued that Native Americans were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The lost 10 tribes were believed to have disappeared after being taken captive by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE. Smith's speculation was inspired by the apocryphal book II Esdras 13:41, which claims that the ten tribes settled in a far country, "where never mankind dwelt."