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

James Pierson Beckwourth (1798-1866) was a fur trader and explorer born into slavery in Virginia. He moved to the West, and as a fur trapper, he lived with the Crow for years. He is credited with the discovery of Beckwourth Pass through the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the California Gold Rush era.

First published in 1907, My Life as an Indian is the memoir of James Willard Schultz and tells the story of his first year living with the Pikuni tribe in Montana. It includes accounts of religious customs and ceremonies, hunting, raids, food preparation, child-rearing and more, and is thus of great interest to anthropologists and students of Native American history.

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."

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.  

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was an English playwright, poet, translator, and fiction writer from the Restoration era. Oroonoko (1688) is a unique early example of the novel genre. It employs a first-person narrative from a female perspective and addresses some of the controversial political, economic, and social issues of the time. The injustices of the slave trade are exposed through the author’s graphic account of the cruel realities of life in the English colonies. 

The Rev. Calvin Dill Wilson (1857-1946) was an author and Presbyterian minister. In Black Masters of 1904, he discusses the little-known history of the free African-Americans that bought and sold slaves just like Southern white planters. Free colored men and women could own their families and in this way protect them against oppressive local laws. There was also the desire to attain a position of superiority over other blacks, an ambition to rise to the class of the masters and to be on the same level as white men. 

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.

Rufus L. Perry was an educator and Baptist minister from Brooklyn, New York. He was a member of the African Civilization Society and was a co-founder of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum. The Cushite is a short work that investigates the history of ancient peoples.

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

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.

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.