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

Twelve Years a Slave is the 1853 narrative of former slave Solomon Northup. He was born free in New York and kidnapped and sold into slavery. It was famously adapted for film in 2013.

The autobiography of Louis Hughes serves as a window on the daily lives of slaves before and during the Civil War. Born into slavery near Charlottesville, Virginia in 1832, the narrative charts his life through Pontotoc, Mississippi to Memphis where he met his wife Matilda Morgan, to Tombigbee, Alabama and escape from slavery in Mississippi in 1865. Hughes provides unique historical insight into slavery in the Confederacy during the Civil War and concludes with the family living as free people in Milwaukee.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (1887-1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) is a collection of his speeches, setting out his vision of a united Africa. As an early proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, he encouraged a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora. Garvey deplored the view of poverty as a virtue and encourages Blacks to be empowered in every sphere of their lives.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States. Washington came from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. Character Building (1902) is a collection of talks on self-development given to students and faculty at the Tuskegee Institute, of which he was leader. The author stresses the importance of developing oneself for life-long success.

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 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.

Paul Jennings, a slave of James Madison's, recounts his experiences with the man. He provides insights into his relationship with President Madison, including the kindness he showed him. Jennings lived in the White House and was with President Madison until the day of his death.

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.

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 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.

The Gift of Black Folk is an analysis of the role of African Americans in the development of American culture. The author provides examples of the ways in which the culture was shaped and enriched by Blacks on many levels, including their economic, religious, and cultural contributions.

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.

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.

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.

Mohammed Ali ben Said (later renamed Nicholas Said) was born in North Africa and enslaved when he was 12 years old. During his eventful life, he traveled to five continents, learned seven languages, served princes and diplomats, fought in the Union Army, and recorded his life story in his own words. He finally settled in Alabama, and his autobiography was published in 1873.

In this work published in 1888, the author recounts the history of the Edomites as gathered from the Bible. It examines the history of the Edomites in detail, from Esau to the siege of Jerusalem by Titus.

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.

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.

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.