World's Great Men of Color

[jah_yout]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: MGee</div><div class="ubbcode-body">how did Rogers see himself? that's the question i have. i don't think i've read anything where Rogers' identified himelf as a Jamaican or even as a black man, despite his scholarship. He's worthy of research, I think. Until we learn more about him, whatever we project on him - brown man apologist, radical black nationalist - those things are just projections.
</div></div>

quote from rogers

. <span style="font-weight: bold">Now that I have shown you the humanity of the Negro, Rogers asks, what will you do? Shall you deny the monuments, the paintings, and the artifacts that speak plainly of the humanity of the Negro? Or will you accept these items as valid arguments of my contribution to the world?</span>

endquote

[jah_yout]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: MGee</div><div class="ubbcode-body">thanks for that jah yout. it doesn't answer for me the essential question of how rogers saw himself - whether as a black man or what. his observation that some blacks were more brilliant than some whites doesn't equate (necessarily) to self-identification one way or another. his chief motivation may be to prove the fallacy of aryan race superiority, not necessarily an assertive declaration of the humanity of black people given the thinking of his day. this is the one quarrel i have with his books now (well, the ones that i have) - that with him it becomes sometimes almost a counting of percentages (hummuch black inna di person) and an accounting of the presence/absence of so-called negroid features - even the quality of black skin.

i loved his books as a youngster looking for my own racial identity comfort and validation - i find them harder to read today.

again, i say though, i appreciate his scholarship and single-mindedness on the subject matter, especially given his humble beginnings.
</div></div>

seen MGee; i heear you;

but it is not what you TELL me you are...i will know you by your works...
i have read many many ja rogers books and my conclusion is that this man was a warrior with a pen...
he refuted so many of the lies of that time with intelligent arguments with proof...
i'm not surprised he is never mentioned in american text books (or jamaican)...
he might have had some of the baggage of the time on what was a 'negro'- a racist creation with thick lips flat nose and jet-black skin...which is ridiculous as africans are diverse peoples...
i hear what you are saying, but to me this man is a legend:



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


<span style="font-weight: bold">Rogers had known Marcus Garvey from their youth in Jamaica. In 1923 he covered the Marcus Garvey trial, and although never a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, of which Garvey was founder and President-General, he wrote regularly for the UNIA's weekly newspaper, the Negro World, and lectured to local UNIA chapters.</span>
A prodigious and meticulous detective, <span style="font-weight: bold">Rogers did exhaustive, primary research into the global history of African people</span>. In 1925 he went to Europe for investigations in the libraries and museums there. In 1927 he returned to Europe for research lasting three years, and journeyed to North Africa during the same period. Between 1930 and 1933 Rogers continued his explorations in Europe, while in 1930, 1935 and 1936 he pursued his researches in Egypt and Sudan.

The year 1930 was indeed a high water mark in Rogers' career, for it was in that year that Rogers went to Ethiopia as a correspondent for the New York Amsterdam News to attend the coronation of Haile Selassie I, who presented him with the Coronation Medal. It was also in 1930 that Rogers spoke at the international Congress of Anthropology held in Paris and opened by the president of France.

Rogers' organizational affiliations included the Paris Society of Anthropology, the American Geographical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Academy of Political Science.

<span style="font-weight: bold">For fifty years of his life, Rogers investigated and reported the accomplishments of ancient and contemporary African people and their place in history, contributing to such publications as the Crisis, American Mercury, the Messenger, the Negro World and Survey Graphic. To the Pittsburgh Courier Rogers contributed an illustrated feature entitled Your History.</span>

[jah_yout]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

MGee said:
the anecdotal story is that Rogers was shocked when he, a light-skinned Jamaican, went to America and was called &quot;black&quot;. so he devoted his life to showing there's nothing wrong with being black. his scholarship was great, though his motivation was a lickle defensive.
[/quote]

foolya said:What ever the motive, we're reaping the benefit. If he was accepted we wouldn't have any reference book, do you know any others? I found this in his book.

[/quote]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


serious ting...
i have all my ja rogers books in a safe place...valuable stuff;

read 'from superman to man' if you have not;
this book proves he was a great african patriot...
and i doubt very much he did all this because he wasn't accepted into the white world or didn't consider himself a 'negro';
this kind of rumor is usually spread to plant seeds of doubt where the evidence shows there could be none...
this man showed more pride in being african than many people who we know right now in this new millenium..and he was born in the 1800's

[foolya]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

Here is link to get classical blacks books very inexpensive. I just bought all of Rogers books for under $50.

[Wahalla]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I thought all his books seemed defensive. (Much like the biblical &quot;you are black but you are comely&quot... A friend of mine at Munro got it as a O'level prize for Biology I think.. His comment at the time was

&quot;Did they give this to me because I am the blackest person who won a prize?&quot; </div></div>

in the context of the time in which they were written i imagine they would seem a little defensive...
they routinely wrote ghastly &amp; malicious lies about african peoples in their books in these time...
rogers by rebutting them was somewhat in a battle against libel of african peoples;
it seems even more incredible now when you realize that many africans still don't have the basic knowledge of self..

rogers should be a jamaican national hero in my book </div></div>

Sir that is a very valid point...which I agree with.... I guess that my concern is that each generation should reinterprete history as per their perspective...JA Rogers did thie extraordinarily well... No one else seems to have done so for the last 70 years with the same breath accesibility, encyclopedic or elegant aproach as Mr Rogers.... It does feel dated when I glanced at his stuff... I will get it for my children at some point....

Another book I have that issue with is CLR James Black Jacobins.... I love that book and think it should be required reading for every single person on the planet..... I re-read it every dacade. I dont think a day passes on Jamaicans.com when I dont mentally reference it.. but at times I think does his Marxist interpretation the only interpretation ??????? However all other interpretations seem shrill..

You are right about Rogers place in Jamaican consiousness... in a sense more people on the planet have had awareness their focus in history from JA Rogers rather than Garvey.... (Whom he had issues with!)

[jah_yout]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

you know i still have not read black jacobins but it will be added to my list immediately...
yes rogers actually knew garvey from childhood...

another interesting character that ja rogers brought my awareness to was alexander pushkin...
the great russian writer who is of ethiopian descent...
russia &amp; eritrea are teaming up to build a statue for him in eritrea

[Wahalla]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">you know i still have not read black jacobins but it will be added to my list immediately...
yes rogers actually knew garvey from childhood...

another interesting character that ja rogers brought my awareness to was alexander pushkin...
the great russian writer who is of ethiopian descent...
russia &amp; eritrea are teaming up to build a statue for him in eritrea
</div></div>

What a ineberate who died in duel ?????? That a joke! I was looking at a biography of Puskin the other day... And there is some dispute as to where his granfather came from.. Beleive it or not one of hte sugested places is the Cameroon and or Senegal!

Also last week he was voted the fourth most influential Russian above Stalin.. Who was fith.......

Please Read teh Black Jacobins.. It destroys teh myth that Malcolm X popularises about House you know what!

[mountaingal]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

i have couple books of pushkin's work. can't recall anything really memorable, but maybe i need to read them again.

i think i learned about pushkin from rogers as well, but then again i was friends with a black marxist bookshop owner who carried a lot of stuff from russia, so maybe that's how i got to know pushkin.

what i remember most from rogers sex and race was that some English queen consort named Charlotte (?) had black blood.

[mountaingal]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Please Read teh Black Jacobins.. It destroys teh myth that Malcolm X popularises about House you know what!

</div></div>

Does the Black Jacobins deal with Henri Christophe?

[Wahalla]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

I also belevie to define her as black would be to define Peter Ustinov as black.. He was related to Pushkin.... her claim to African ancestry was I belveive from an ancestor 9 times removed who was described as a Moor... 9Which could in the context of the time it was made mean a lot of different things... ie she was related to an islamic ruler, was a converso, was a west African..

Any way she had two of her grandfatehrs who were the same person.... Must have been from Dung South STE....

Mind you she was played by Helen Mirren in The Madness of King George

[Wahalla]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

who my favorite Emperor of Haiti ????

[mountaingal]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">who my favorite Emperor of Haiti ???? </div></div>
fi real he was ur fave?

i've visited the citadelle. have to say i was intrigued by christophe's adoption of european customs even as he was paranoid about being invaded by them.

[Wahalla]

Re: World's Great Men of Color

Being facetieous.... The man re introduced slavery to build the Citerdele.... Had style though.. Shot himself with a silver bullet....

No He is not dealt with in great detail in the black Jacobins.... But that is why I wonder about it.. CLR does not go much beyond the depostion of Tossaint...