John Henrik Clarke
This article may be written from a fan's point of view, rather than a neutral point of view. (December 2019) |
John Henrik Clarke | |
---|---|
Born | John Henry Clark January 1, 1915 Union Springs, Alabama |
Died | July 16, 1998 Manhattan, New York City | (aged 83)
Occupation | Writer, historian, professor |
Nationality | American |
John Henrik Clarke (born John Henry Clark; January 1, 1915 – July 16, 1998)
Early life and education
He was born John Henry Clark on January 1, 1915, in Union Springs, Alabama,[4] the youngest child of John Clark, a sharecropper, and Willie Ella Clark, a washer woman, who died in 1922.[5] ). With the hopes of earning enough money to buy land rather than sharecrop, his family moved to the closest mill town in Columbus, Georgia.
Counter to his mother's wishes for him to become a farmer, Clarke left Georgia in 1933 by freight train and went to
Clarke was heavily influenced by Cheikh Anta Diop, which inspired his piece "The Historical Legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop: His Contributions to a New Concept of African History". Clarke believed that the credited Greek philosophers gained much of their theories and thoughts from contact with Africans, who influenced the early Western world.
Positions in academia
Clarke was a professor of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at
In its obituary of Clarke, The New York Times noted that the activist's ascension to professor emeritus at Hunter College was "unusual... without benefit of a high school diploma, let alone a Ph.D." It acknowledged that "nobody said Professor Clarke wasn't an academic original."[1] In 1994, Clarke earned a doctorate from the non-accredited Pacific Western University (now California Miramar University) in Los Angeles, having earned a bachelor's degree there in 1992.[8]
Career
By the 1920s, the Great Migration and demographic changes had led to a concentration of African Americans living in Harlem. A synergy developed among the artists, writers, and musicians and many figured in the Harlem Renaissance. They began to implement supporting structures of study groups and informal workshops to develop newcomers and young people.
Arriving in Harlem at the age of 18 in 1933,
In the post-World War II era, there was new artistic development, with small presses and magazines being founded and surviving for brief times. Writers and publishers continued to start new enterprises: Clarke was co-founder of the Harlem Quarterly (1949–51), book review editor of the Negro History Bulletin (1948–52), associate editor of the magazine, Freedomways, and a feature writer for the black-owned Pittsburgh Courier.[9]
Clarke taught at the New School for Social Research from 1956 to 1958.[11] Traveling in West Africa in 1958–59, he met Kwame Nkrumah, whom he had mentored as a student in the US,[12] and was offered a job working as a journalist for the Ghana Evening News. He also lectured at the University of Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, including in Nigeria at the University of Ibadan.[citation needed]
Becoming prominent during the
Besides teaching at Hunter College and Cornell University, Clarke founded professional associations to support the study of black culture. He was a founder with Leonard Jeffries and first president of the African Heritage Studies Association, which supported scholars in areas of history, culture, literature, and the arts. He was a founding member of other organizations to support work in black culture: the Black Academy of Arts and Letters and the African-American Scholars' Council.[9]
Personal life
Clarke's first marriage was to the mother of his daughter Lillie (who died before her father).[citation needed] They divorced.
In 1961, Clarke married Eugenia Evans in New York, and together they had a son and daughter: Nzingha Marie and Sonni Kojo.[citation needed] The marriage ended in divorce.
In 1997, John Henrik Clarke married his longtime companion, Sybil Williams.
Legacy and honors
- 1985 – Faculty of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University named the John Henrik Clarke Library after him.[16]
- 1995 – Carter G. Woodson Medallion, Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.
- 2002 – Molefi Kete Asante listed Dr. John Henrik Clarke as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.[17][importance?]
- 2011 – Immortal Technique includes a short speech by Dr. Clarke on his album The Martyr. It is Track 13, which is entitled "The Conquerors".
Selected bibliography
- Editor and contributor, William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968) (other contributors are Alvin F. Poussaint, Vincent Harding, John Oliver Killens, John A. Williams, Ernest Kaiser, Loyle Hairston, Charles V. Hamilton, and Mike Thelwell.)
- Editor and contributor, with the assistance of Amy Jacques Garvey, Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa (1974)
- The Boy Who Painted Jesus Black (1975)
- Editor, Malcolm X: Man and His Times (1991), an anthology of the activist's writing
- Anna Swanston (2003). Dr. John Henrik Clarke: his life, his words, his works. IAM Unlimited Pub. ISBN 978-1-929526-06-2.
- Africans at the Crossroads: Notes for an African World Revolution[18]
- Rebellion in Rhyme: The Early Poetry of John Henrik Clarke[19]
- New Dimensions in African World History: The London Lectures of Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan and Dr. John Henrik Clarke[20]
- Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism[21]
- African People in World History[22]
- My Life in Search of Africa[23]
- Who Betrayed the African World Revolution? And other Speeches[24]
- Critical Lessons in Slavery and the Slave Trade: Essential Studies and Commentaries on Slavery, in General, and the African Slave Trade, in Particular[25]
- Ahmed Baba: A Scholar of Old Africa[26]
- The Image of Africa in the Mind of the Afro-American: African Identity in the Literature of Struggle[27]
- A New Approach to African History[28]
- On the Other Side: A Story of the Color Line, Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 9 (September, 1939): 269–270.
Short stories by John Henrik Clarke
- "On the Other Side: A Story of the Color Line," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 9 (September, 1939): 269–270.
- "Leader of the Mob: A Story of the Color Line," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 10 (October, 1939), p. 301-303.
- "Santa Claus is a White Man: A Story of the Color Line," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 12 (December, 1939), pp. 365–367.
- "The Boy Who Painted Christ Black: A Short Story," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 18, No. 9 (September, 1940), pp. 264–266.
- "Prelude to an Education: A Short Story," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 18, No. 11 (November, 1940), pp. 335+
- "Return to the Inn," The Crisis, Vol. 48, No. 9 (September 1941), pp. 288+
- "The Bridge," Harlem Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1949–1950), pp. 2–8.
- "Return of the Askia," Harlem Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1950), pp. 45–49.
- "Journey to Sierra Maestra," Freedomways, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1961), pp. 32–35.
- "The Morning Train to Ibadan," Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Autumn, 1962), pp. 527–530.
- "Third Class on the Blue Train to Kumasi," Phylon, Vol. 23, 3rd Quarter (Fall, 1962), pp. 294–301.
- "Revolt of the Angels - A Short Story," Freedomways, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Summer 1963): pp. 355–360.
See also
- Ivan van Sertima
- Hubert Harrison
- Arturo Alfonso Schomburg-Schomburg personal books became Schomburg Library before it became a part of the New York Public Library system
- John G. Jackson
- Yosef Ben-Jochannan
- Chancellor Williams
- Jacob Carruthers
- Marcus Garvey
- Cheikh Anta Diop
- Amos N. Wilson
Notes
- ^ Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2009.
- ISBN 978-1-85984-228-7.
- ^ Kelley, Robin D.G. (3 January 1999). "THE LIVES THEY LIVED: John Henrik Clarke; Self-Made Angry Man". The New York Times.
- ^ "Dr. John Henrik Clarke". www.raceandhistory.com. Retrieved 2019-02-09.
- ^ "John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998)". BlackPast. 2007-01-23. Retrieved 2019-02-09.
- OCLC 778418838.
- ^ Eric Kofi Acree, "John Henrik Clarke: Historian, Scholar, and Teacher", Cornell University Library.
- ^ a b c Andy Wallace, "John H. Clarke, 83, Leading African American Historian", Philly.com (The Inquirer), July 18, 1998.
- ^ a b c "John Henrik Clarke" Archived 2006-06-24 at the Wayback Machine, Legacy Exhibit online, New Jersey Public Library - Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture; accessed January 20, 2009.
- ^ Jacob H. Carruthers, "John Henrik Clarke: the Harlem connection to the founding of Africana Studies", in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, Afro-American Historical Association of the Niagara Frontier, Inc., 2006; accessed May 25, 2009.
- ^ Golus, Carrie, "Clarke, John Henrik 1915–1998", Contemporary Black Biography. 1999. Encyclopedia.com.
- ^ "Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Hunter College, CUNY", Sankofa World Publishers.
- ^ Christopher Williams, "Clarke, John Henrik", in Henry Louis Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds), Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 118.
- ^ Rochell Isaac, "Clarke, John Henrik", in Encyclopedia of African American History: Volume 1, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 424.
- ^ "Historical People", Green Acres Cemetery.
- ^ "History of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library", reprinted from Black Caucus of the ALA Newsletter, vol. XXIV, No. 5 (April 1996), p. 11; Cornell University Library, accessed January 20, 2009.
- ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
- OCLC 1030335852.
- OCLC 226662479.
- OCLC 1004962632.
- OCLC 1075601511.
- OCLC 1041373444.
- OCLC 38081841.
- OCLC 34068139.
- OCLC 36548023.
- OCLC 18539052.
- OCLC 22081342.
- OCLC 61481798.
Further reading
- Kwaku Person-Lynn, "On My Journey Now: The Narrative and Works of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary", with a foreword by ISSN 1523-9780).
External links
- Robert McG. Thomas Jr., "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83", New York Times, July 20, 1998
- "The John Henrik Clarke Virtual Museum", National Black United Front Web Site
- "John Henrik Clarke" (page dedicated to his memory), Hunter College, City University of New York
- Published Works by/on Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Hunter College.
- "John Henrik Clarke - A Great and Mighty Walk (full version)", YouTube.
- "Dr. John Henrik Clarke - Education: The Highest Form of Struggle".
- "Are We Ready for the Twenty-First Century"
- FBI files on John Henrik Clarke