Ten Books Which Influenced African Americans
Overview
The ten books selected played a role in shaping the thought of African American’s of themselves or in consolidating or defining a major trend or theme in black life. These books were selected because they shifted the consciousness of blacks. Each of the books played a pivotal role in developing the identity, purpose and direction of African Americans. Moreover, each book represents not a single work but a whole climate of thought. In short, each of the ten books presented below expands the grand narrative of African Americans, creating stories to live by, reflecting the aspirations of blacks, helping them to see their lives against the backdrop of time and against the American landscape itself.
Stolen Legacy stands among the scholarly works that have attempted to recover the “lost” history of early African civilization. Stolen Legacy argues that Greek philosophers were not the originators of Greek philosophy, that they derived it form Egyptian priest. James states that the Greek philosophy was the offspring of the Egyptian Mystery and that the Egyptians educated the Greeks. To be sure, this is an African centric re-examination of Greek philosophy, posing the thesis that it was, in plain, stolen from Egypt (i.e., Africa).
James' theory is that classical Greek philosophy was derived from an Ancient Egyptian mystery tradition, possibly concealing advanced scientific knowledge that the Greeks misinterpreted. James' approach to the topic is informed by a wide range of authorities, some classic, others a bit more esoteric. He makes some startling claims, e.g., that Alexander the Great and Aristotle plundered hundreds of books from the Great Library of Alexandria, which were later attributed to Aristotle. He is dead serious about this perceived slight by the Greeks, and even exhorts us to boycott Greek letter fraternities.
Consequently, the book, Stolen Legacy, is an attempt to show that the true authors of Greek philosophy were not the Greeks; but the people of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians; and the praise and honor falsely given to the Greeks for centuries belong to the people of North Africa, and therefore to the African Continent. In turn, this theft of the African legacy by the Greeks led to the erroneous world opinion that the African Continent has made no contribution to civilization, and that its people are naturally backward. This is the misrepresentation that has become the basis of race prejudice, which has affected all people of color.
Black Reconstruction, WEB DuBois
In Black reconstruction, DuBois deals with the question of post-civil War Reconstruction and why it failed. DuBois catalogues the reversal of the post-Reconstruction South and presents Reconstruction as a lost opportunity for all Americans. He describes the Civil War, emancipation of African Americans, and Reconstruction as being part of an all-too brief historical moment of true democracy in America. The book is an revisionist approach to looking at the Reconstruction of the south after its defeat in the American civil war. On the whole, the book takes a Marxist approach to looking at reconstruction.
The essential argument of the text is that the black and white laborers, who are the proletariat, were divided after the civil war on the lines of race, and as such were unable to stand together against the white propertied class, the bourgeoisie. This to Du Bois was the failure of reconstruction and the reason for the rise of the Jim Crow laws, and other such injustices. In addition to creating a landmark work in early U.S. Marxist sociology, at the time Dubois’ historical scholarship and use of the techniques of primary source data research on the post war political economy of the former Confederate States’ were equally ground breaking. He performed the first systematic and rigorous analysis of the political economy of the reconstruction period of the southern states; based upon actual data collected during period.
This research completely disestablished the anecdotal, racist bromides which had come to form the basis of the so-called “scholarship” of the reconstruction period. Dubois’ research discredited forever the notion that the post-emancipation and post-Appomattox south had degenerated into either economic or political chaos, and had been kept in a state of chaos by the armed forces of the Union, through their military occupation. On the contrary, the reconstruction state governments had for example, established their states’ first, universal primary education systems. They did this because the reconstruction state constitutions (which they had written) had, for the first time, established as a right, the free public primary schooling of their states’ children. These governments had also been the first to establish public health departments to promote public health and sanitation, and to combat the spread of epidemic disease that is inherent in the semi-tropical climate of the south.
Souls of Black Folk, WEB DuBois
Du Bois said, on the launch of his groundbreaking 1903 treatise The Souls of Black Folk, “for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line”—a prescient statement. Setting out to show to the reader “the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century,” Du Bois explains the meaning of the emancipation, and its effect, and his views on the role of the leaders of his race. These succinct lines summarize the aim of the collection, which is to impress upon the world the particular experience of being an African American some forty years after the Civil War. The work consists of fourteen essays on various topics, from a history of the U.S. government's efforts at Reconstruction to a discussion of the role of religion in the black community.
First published in 1903, it was reprinted twenty-four times between then and 1940 alone; it is easily Du Bois' most widely read book and is considered a masterpiece. Coined the Father of social science, Du Bois brings together a blend of history, sociological data, poetry, song, and the benefit of his personal experience to propose his vision of how and why color poses such a dilemma at the turn of the twentieth century. His assertion is fortuitous, and the collection continues to provide insight into the ways that the African-American culture is intrinsic to the larger American culture, and how history has made that relationship inherently problematic.
Dubois also advanced his prophetic statement of race on race in America: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”
"Harlem as a site of the black cultural sublime was invented by writers and artists determined to transform the stereotypical image of Negro Americans at the turn of the century away from their popular image as ex-slaves, as members of a race inherently inferior - biologically and environmentally unfitted for mechanized modernity and its cosmopolitan forms of fluid identity - into an image of a race of cultural bearers. To effect this transformation, a 'New Negro' was called for - quite urgently, many black intellectuals felt- and this New Negro would need a nation over which to preside. And that nation's capital would be Harlem, that realm north of Central Park, centered between 130th Street and 145th."
"In a 1925 essay entitled 'The New Negro', Howard University Professor of Philosophy Alain Locke described this transformation as not relying on older time-worn models but, rather, embracing a 'new psychology' and 'new sprit'. Central to Locke's prescription was the mandate that the 'New Negro' had to 'smash' all of the racial, social and psychological impediments that had long obstructed black achievement. Six years prior to Locke's essay, the pioneering black film maker Oscar Micheaux called for similar changes. In his film Within our Gates, Micheaux represented a virtual cornucopia of 'New Negro' types: from the educated and entrepreneurial 'race' man and woman to the incorrigible Negro hustler, from the liberal white philanthropist to the hard core white racist. Micheaux created a complex, melodramatic narrative around these types in order to develop a morality tale of pride, prejudice, misanthropy and progressivism that would be revisited by Locke and others."
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God is most often celebrated for Hurston’s unique use of language, particularly her mastery of rural Southern black dialect. Throughout the novel, she utilizes an interesting narrative structure, splitting the presentation of the story between high literary narration and idiomatic discourse. The long passages of discourse celebrate the culturally rich voices of Janie’s world; these characters speak as do few others in American literature, and their distinctive grammar, vocabulary, and tone mark their individuality.
Hurston’s use of language parallels Janie’s quest to find her voice. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes in the afterword to most modern editions of the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God is primarily concerned “with the project of finding a voice, with language as an instrument of injury and salvation, of selfhood and empowerment.” Jody stifles Janie’s speech, as when he prevents her from talking after he is named mayor; her hatred of him stems from this suppression of her individuality. Tea Cake, on the other hand, engages her speech, conversing with her and putting himself on equal terms with her; her love for him stems from his respect for her individuality.
After Janie discovers her ability to define herself by her speech interactions with others, she learns that silence too can be a source of empowerment; having found her voice, she learns to control it. Similarly, the narrator is silent in conspicuous places, neither revealing why Janie isn’t upset with Tea Cake’s beating nor disclosing her words at the trial. In terms of both the form of the novel and its thematic content, Hurston places great emphasis on the control of language as the source of identity and empowerment.
On the surface, Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young man shackled by poverty and racism in 1930s Chicago, whose unintentional murder of a white woman and subsequent actions touch off a city-wide manhunt that leads to capture, conviction and the death sentence. Yet, the undercurrents deliver the real tale. The novel is more than a lurid action tale of murder and mayhem; it is a clarion call for a deeper understanding of how the failure to address the problems caused by years of systematic oppression can lead to bitter rebellion and desperate violence. Native Son is a psychological as well as a sociological novel, and Bigger's development is outlined by the three sections of the novel.
The central theme of Native Son is the central theme of most black American writing, the duality of black existence in the United States. In particular the novel explores the stifling limitations imposed on blacks. As in Uncle Tom's Children, the central movement of Native Son is toward the development of self-awareness. Bigger's development is perverted by environmental pressures that make him feel that violence is his only way to self-realization. In brief, in Native Son, Richard Wright aimed to present the complex and disturbing status of racial politics in America.
The narrator introduces himself as an “invisible man.” He explains that his invisibility owes not to some biochemical accident or supernatural cause but rather to the unwillingness of other people to notice him, as he is black. It is as though other people are sleepwalkers moving through a dream in which he doesn’t appear. The narrator says that his invisibility can serve both as an advantage and as a constant aggravation. Being invisible sometimes makes him doubt whether he really exists. He describes his anguished, aching need to make others recognize him, and says he has found that such attempts rarely succeed.
The Prologue of Invisible Man introduces the major themes that define the rest of the novel. The metaphors of invisibility and blindness allow for an examination of the effects of racism on the victim and the perpetrator. Because the narrator is black, whites refuse to see him as an actual, three-dimensional person; hence, he portrays himself as invisible and describes them as blind.
The Prologue also helps to place the novel within larger literary and philosophical contexts. Especially apparent is the influence of existentialism, a philosophy that originated in France in the mid-twentieth century, which sought to define the meaning of individual existence in a seemingly meaningless universe. At the time of Invisible Man’s publication in 1952, existentialism had reached the height of its popularity; Ellison’s book proposes to undertake a similar examination of the meaning of individual existence, but through the lens of race relations in postwar America. In French existentialist works, physical infirmities (such as nausea in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and disease in the work of Albert Camus) frequently symbolize internal struggles; Ellison locates the tension of race relations in similar conditions: invisibility and blindness.
In final, the narrator’s central struggle involves the conflict between how others perceive him and how he perceives himself. Racist attitudes cause others to view him in terms of racial stereotypes—as a mugger, bumpkin, or savage. But the narrator desires recognition of his individuality rather than recognition based on these stereotypes. The “blindness” of others stems from an inability to see the narrator without imposing these alien identities on him. The narrator notes that, given this situation, it does not matter how he thinks of himself, because anyone—even the anonymous blond man on the street—can force him to confront or assume an alien identity, simply by uttering a racial insult. Thus confined, the narrator flees the outside world in search of the freedom to define himself without the constraints that racism imposes.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the remarkable true story of an African-American man’s rise—from street hustler, dope peddler, and thief—to one of the most dynamic and influential African-American leaders in modern America. The Autobiography of Malcolom X spans four decades: from his birth on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, to his tragic assassination on February 21, 1965 in New York City.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the life story of Malcolm Little: son of a Baptist minister, wide-eyed teenager in Boston, street hustler and prison inmate in New York, faithful and energetic member of the Nation of Islam, and, finally, Muslim pilgrim determined to create an organization for all blacks regardless of their religion. It is also a tale of, as the author puts it, a "homemade'' education pursued in the schools, on the streets, in prison, and at the feet of his mentor Elijah Muhammad. Many considered Malcolm X's separatist philosophies (later softened) disturbing and in direct opposition to those of the period's other well-known black activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued for integration and non-violent confrontation.
One of Malcolm X's greatest desires was to open other African Americans' eyes to the history of black oppression and slavery in the United States and the world. The book's opening chapter immediately presents Malcolm's mother pregnant with him, struggling to save her family and home as white men threaten to harm them. By the end of the same chapter, the family's house has been burned down, and Malcolm's father has been murdered by a gang of white supremacists. Malcolm X's life has been defined by the oppression of his family and friends.
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Harold Cruse
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is one of the most influential works published after the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Cruse’s central augment is that the failure of the black bourgeoisie, artists, and intellectuals to create autonomous black cultural institutions and scholarship fostered and unhealthy reliance on white patronage. Cruses maintains that this failure of the black intellectual to crate a paradigm for looking at the world based on black sensibilities and viewpoints were abdicating their responsibility to the black masses.
Published in 1967, as the early triumphs of the Civil Rights movement yielded to increasing frustration and violence, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual electrified a generation of activists and intellectuals. The product of a lifetime of struggle and reflection, Cruse's book is a singular amalgam of cultural history, passionate disputation, and deeply considered analysis of the relationship between American blacks and American society.
Reviewing black intellectual life from the Harlem Renaissance through the 1960s, Cruse discusses the legacy (and offers memorably acid-edged portraits) of figures such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, arguing that their work was marked by a failure to understand the specifically American character of racism in the United States. This supplies the background to Cruse's controversial critique of both integrationism and black nationalism and to his claim that black Americans will only assume a just place within American life when they develop their own distinctive centers of cultural and economic influence. For Cruse's most important accomplishment may well be his rejection of the clichés of the melting pot in favor of a vision of Americanness as an arena of necessary and vital contention, an open and ongoing struggle.
With a new introduction, the groundbreaking classic Race Matters" affirms its position as the bestselling, most influential, and most original articulation of the urgent issues in America's ongoing racial debate. Cornel West is at the forefront of thinking about race. In Race Matters" he addresses a range of issues, from the crisis in black leadership and the myths surrounding black sexuality to affirmative action, the new black conservatism, and the strained relations between Jews and African Americans. He never hesitates to confront the prejudices of all his readers or wavers in his insistence that they share a common destiny. Bold in its thought and written with a redemptive passion grounded in the tradition of the African-American church, Race Matters" is a book that is at once challenging and deeply healing.
By analyzing social issues through a humanistic and often spiritual lense, West transforms discussions of the fine points of affirmative action or the failings of black leadership into wide-ranging inquiries on the human condition. West's thinking consistently challenges the conventional wisdom. Black leaders should have been honest, he writes, about the fact that Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill were "two black Republican conservative supporters of some of the most vicious policies to besiege black working and poor communities since Jim and Jane Crow segregation." Black sexuality is a taboo subject in America principally because it is a form of black power over which whites have little control, he argues in one essay. And West faults both blacks and Jews for failing "to define the moral character of their Jewish and black identities." Although politically a progressive, West isn't a cheerleader for any cause - every reader will find some sacred belief questioned.
