Africa's Gift to America
Africa's Gift to America

Author: J. A. Rogers

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 081957550X

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A classic work of black study that shines a light on the accomplishments of African people within Western history—from the groundbreaking journalist. Originally published in 1959 and revised and expanded in 1989, this book asserts that Africans had contributed more to the world than was previously acknowledged. Historian Joel Augustus Rogers devoted a significant amount of his professional life to unearthing facts about people of African ancestry. He intended these findings to be a refutation of contemporary racist beliefs about the inferiority of blacks. Rogers asserted that the color of skin did not determine intellectual genius, and he publicized the great black civilizations that had flourished in Africa during antiquity. According to Rogers, many ancient African civilizations had been primal molders of Western civilization and culture.

The Dragon's Gift
The Dragon's Gift

Author: Deborah Brautigam

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-04-07

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0191619760

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Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. Media reports about huge aid packages, support for pariah regimes, regiments of Chinese labor, and the ruthless exploitation of workers and natural resources in some of the poorest countries in the world sparked fierce debates. These debates, however, took place with very few hard facts. China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace. This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Drawing on three decades of experience in China and Africa, and hundreds of interviews in Africa, China, Europe and the US, Brautigam shines new light on a topic of great interest. China has ended poverty for hundreds of millions of its own citizens. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with China's rise, and what it might mean for the challenge of ending poverty in Africa.

American Africans in Ghana
American Africans in Ghana

Author: Kevin K. Gaines

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2012-12-30

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0807867829

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In 1957 Ghana became one of the first sub-Saharan African nations to gain independence from colonial rule. Over the next decade, hundreds of African Americans--including Martin Luther King Jr., George Padmore, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Pauli Murray, and Muhammad Ali--visited or settled in Ghana. Kevin K. Gaines explains what attracted these Americans to Ghana and how their new community was shaped by the convergence of the Cold War, the rise of the U.S. civil rights movement, and the decolonization of Africa. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's president, posed a direct challenge to U.S. hegemony by promoting a vision of African liberation, continental unity, and West Indian federation. Although the number of African American expatriates in Ghana was small, in espousing a transnational American citizenship defined by solidarities with African peoples, these activists along with their allies in the United States waged a fundamental, if largely forgotten, struggle over the meaning and content of the cornerstone of American citizenship--the right to vote--conferred on African Americans by civil rights reform legislation.

African Americans and Africa
African Americans and Africa

Author: Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0300244916

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An introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. The diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration are all examined to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture.

People Could Fly: American Black Folktales
People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

Author: Virginia Hamilton

Publisher:

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Retold Afro-American folktales of animals, fantasy, the supernatural, and desire for freedom, born of the sorrow of the slaves, but passed on in hope.

Dream a World Anew
Dream a World Anew

Author: Nat'l Museum African American Hist/Cult

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2016-09-27

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1588345688

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Dream A World Anew is the stunning gift book accompanying the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. It combines informative narratives from leading scholars, curators, and authors with objects from the museum's collection to present a thorough exploration of African American history and culture. The first half of the book bridges a major gap in our national memory by examining a wide arc of African American history, from Slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Great Migrations through Segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. The second half of the book celebrates African American creativity and cultural expressions through art, dance, theater, and literature. Sidebars and profiles of influential figures--including Harriet Tubman, Robert Smalls, Ida B. Wells, Mordecai Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and many others--provide additional context and interest throughout the book. Dream a World Anew is a powerful book that provides an opportunity to explore and revel in African American history and culture, as well as the chance to see how central African American history is for all Americans.

Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons
Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons

Author: Jessica B. Harris

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 1999-02-03

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780684853260

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Cajun, Creole, and Caribbean dishes all have their roots in the cooking of West and Central Africa; the peanuts, sweet potatoes, rice, cassava, plantains, and chile pepper that star in the cuisines of New Orleans, Puerto Rico, and Brazil are as important in the Old World as they are in the New World. In Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons, esteemed culinary historian and cookbook author Jessica Harris returns to the source to trace the ways in which African food has migrated to the New World and transformed the way we eat. From condiments to desserts, Harris shares more than 175 recipes that find their roots and ingredients in Africa, from Sand-roasted Peanuts to Curried Coconut Soup, from Pepper Rum to Candied Sweet Potatoes, from Beaten Biscuits to Jamaica Chicken Run Down, from Shortening Bread to Ti-Punch. Enticing recipes, a colorful introduction on the evolution of transported African food, information on ingredients from achiote to z'oiseaux and utensils make this culinary journey a tantalizing, and satisfying, experience.

The Americans Are Coming!
The Americans Are Coming!

Author: Robert Trent Vinson

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0821444050

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For more than half a century before World War II, black South Africans and “American Negroes”—a group that included African Americans and black West Indians—established close institutional and personal relationships that laid the necessary groundwork for the successful South African and American antiapartheid movements. Though African Americans suffered under Jim Crow racial discrimination, oppressed Africans saw African Americans as free people who had risen from slavery to success and were role models and potential liberators. Many African Americans, regarded initially by the South African government as “honorary whites” exempt from segregation, also saw their activities in South Africa as a divinely ordained mission to establish “Africa for Africans,” liberated from European empires. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest black-led movement with two million members and supporters in forty-three countries at its height in the early 1920s, was the most anticipated source of liberation. Though these liberation prophecies went unfulfilled, black South Africans continued to view African Americans as inspirational models and as critical partners in the global antiapartheid struggle. The Americans Are Coming! is a rare case study that places African history and American history in a global context and centers Africa in African Diaspora studies.

The Gifts of Africa
The Gifts of Africa

Author: Jeff Pearce

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-04-15

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 1633887715

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“The West will begin to understand Africa when it realizes it’s not talking to a child—it’s talking to its mother.” So writes Jeff Pearce in the introduction to his fascinating, groundbreaking work, The Gifts of Africa: How a Continent and Its People Changed the World. We learn early on in school how Europe and Asia gave us important literature, science, and art, and how their nations changed the course of history. But what about Africa? There are plenty of books that detail its colonialism, corruption, famine, and war, but few that discuss the debt owed to African thinkers and innovators. In The Gifts of Africa, we meet Zera Yacob, an Ethiopian philosopher who developed the same critical approach and several of the same ideas as René Descartes. We consider how Somalis traded with China, and we meet the African warrior queens who still inspire national pride. We explore how Liberia’s Edward Wilmot Blyden deeply influenced Marcus Garvey, and we sneak into the galleries and theaters of 1920s Paris, where African art and dance first began to make huge impacts on the world. Relying on meticulous research, Pearce brings to life a rich intellectual legacy and profiles modern innovators like acclaimed griot Papa Susso and renowned economist George Ayittey from Ghana. From the ancient Nubians to a Nigerian superstar in modern painting and sculpture, from the father of sociology in the Maghreb to how the Mau Mau in Kenya influenced Malcom X, The Gifts of Africa is bold, engaging, and takes the reader on a journey of thousands of years up to the present day. Past works have reinforced misconceptions about Africa, from its oral traditions and languages to its resistance to colonial powers. Other books have treated African achievements as a parade of honorable mentions and novelties. This book is different—refreshingly different. It tells the stories behind the milestones and provides insights into how great Africans thought, and how they passed along what they learned. Provocative and entertaining, The Gifts of Africa at last gives the continent its due, and it should change the way we learn about the interactions of cultures and how we teach the history of the world.