LIVES AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF GREAT AFRICAN HISTORIANS

RACE MEN AND RACE WOMEN
LIVES AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF GREAT AFRICAN HISTORIANS:

ABSTRACT OF A SLIDE-PRESENTATION LECTURE

By RUNOKO RASHIDI


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"Let me forever be discarded by the Black race, and let me be condemned by the White, if I strive not with all my powers, if I put not forth all my energies to bring respect and dignity to the African race."
--Edward Wilmot Blyden

Race Men and Race Women: Lives and Contributions of Great African Historians is a slide-presentation overview detailing and summarizing the times and contributions of many of the most significant chroniclers of the African past and the global community of African people. These were the sisters and brothers who in difficult conditions managed to keep alive the tradition of what has been been called "that other African." This is not the African typically portrayed in the media and educational institutions of the western world. Rather, "that other African" refers to the African people who gave birth to and nurtured humanity and produced and refined civilization itself. The presentation is magnificently brought to life through the use of rare and brilliant photographs.

After an initial discussion of such writers as Imhotep, Manetho, Al-Jahiz, Ahmed Baba, Mahmud Kati, Abderrahman es-Sadi, Leo Africanus, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin and Alexander Dumas brother Runoko allows us to sojourn with some of the great contributors of the nineteenth century beginning with Henry Highland Garnet, who demanded that our "motto be resistance." The overview is continued with the dynamic Martin Robison Delany, who told us "Africa for the Africans" and the great Edward Wilmot Blyden. Added to the list are Rev. Rufus Lewis Perry, George Washington Williams (who did research in Belgian king Leopold's Congo) and Bishop Henry McNeil Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century we are joined by such pioneers as Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Rev. James Marmaduke Boddy (the first African to write a comprehensive article on the African presence in the ancient Far East), Charles C. Seifert, William Henry Ferris, Alphonso Orenzo Stafford, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg and the great George Wells Parker. While in the decade of the1920s we are introduced to Dr. Carter G. Woodson, master historian Drusilla Dunjee Houston, the brilliant Joel Augustus Rogers and the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

In the 1930's we are connected with Dr. Willis Nathaniel Huggins, Professor William Leo Hansberry, Nnamdi Azikiwe and in the 1940s we visit with Sterling Means and W.E.B. DuBois, There is no let up. In the 1950s we encounter George G.M. James, the author of Stolen Legacy, and J.C. DeGraft-Johnson, who gave us African Glory. In the 1960s we hear from Malcolm X and by the early 1970s we are prominently introduced to our beloved John Henrik Clarke, John G. Jackson, Dr. Charles B. Copher, Cheikh Anta Diop, Yosef ben-Jochannan, Chancellor Williams, Edward Scobie and Jan Carew. In the late 1970s and 1980s we walk with Ivan Van Sertima and examine the impact of Dr. Theophile Obenga. More recently we note the the contributions of Queen Mother Kefa Nepthys, Jacob Carruthers, Anderson Thompson, Charsee McIntyre, Leonard Jeffries and Asa Grant Hilliard III.

Of course, the presentation is not all about historians and scholars and we look proudly at the lives and contributions of such giants as Mary Ellen Pleasant, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, Nanny Helen Burroughs, Anna Julia Cooper, Hubert Henry Harrison, Duse Mohammad Ali, Ida B. Wells, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Richard B. Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary McLeod Bethune, Septima Clark, Kwame Ture and a whole calvacade of mighty and distinguished soldiers in the army of African victory. Many of them are well known. Others hover in obscurity. All of them deserve recognition. So travel with us through time and space with brother Runoko Rashidi as we sojourn and pay tribute to this grand genealogy of African giants.