Monday, February 20, 2006

Black Facts

From Black Facts

I would like to share some little-known facts about black people in general, mainly taken from a relatively rare work by J.A. Rogers, 100 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THE NEGRO WITH COMPLETE PROOF, written in the 1940's and published in 1957.

A BIT OF BACKGROUND

J.A. Rogers was a self-educated bibliophile who dedicated his life to collecting information about black people throughout history. His work was carefully researched, but few 'scholars' of the time (black or white) would give credit to a self-educated man. Later, Emperor Haile Selassie summoned him to Ethiopia where he was given highest honors for his scholarly achievements. Today, more and more people are 'rediscovering' his works.

BLACK FACTS 1

BLACKFACT:

The word, "coffee," comes from Caffa, Ethiopia, where it was first used and where it still grows wild.

BLACKFACT:

George Washington sent a 'Negro' slave to Barbados to be exchanged for a hogshead of molasses, a cask of rum and 'other good old spirits,' in 1776.

BLACKFACT:

Beethoven, the world's 'greatest' musician, was without a doubt a dark 'mulatto.' He was called "The Black Spaniard." His teacher, the immortal Joseph Haydn, who wrote the music for the former Austrian National Anthem, was 'colored,' too.

BLACKFACT:

The Ganges, the sacred river of India, is named after an Ethiopian king of that name who conquer Asia as far as this river.

The use of the terms 'Negro,' Colored' and 'Mulatto' were commonly used at the time of this work's writing.

The 'proofs' that accompany each entry are too long to be posted here. I will post proofs upon request. I suggest that you hard-copy each post, because there's going to be a WEALTH of information that can be used in the classroom and for general reference.

Regards,

Byron Crudup

BLACK FACTS 2

(from J.A. Roger's 100 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THE NEGRO WITH COMPLETE PROOF, 1957).

The following is the second installment of what I call "Black Facts," little-known items of interest taken straight out of J.A. Roger's works, as cited above. I have altered the term Negro by putting in quotes whenever it was used, simply because I don't like the term. I've also attempted to put certain statements in the context and time frame in which they were written (Much of the work was done in the 1940's).

Byron Crudup (BLC)

BLACK FACT:

(As of 1930) the white population of New York (was) a third more illiterate than the 'Negro' one.

PROOF:

In New York there (were) 375,999 illiterates in a white population of 10,513,933 or 3.6%. 'Negro' illiterates (were) 8,604 in a population of 347,381 or 2.5 % (1930 Census, Vol. II, p. 1229).

COMMENT: I wonder what the stats look like today? (BLC)

BLACK FACT:

In the United States Army Intelligence tests during World War I, the 'Negroes' of Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois and Ohio led the whites of Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas and Georgia by from one to seven percent.

PROOF:

See American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, p.256 (Sept.,1927).

BLACK FACT:

Estevanico, a 'Negro' from Morocco, was one of a party of four to cross the North American continent in 1536 for the first time. The journey took nine years. In 1539 he headed an expedition that discovered Arizona and new Mexico. Estevanico's travels served to open up the Southwest and the States west of Florida, as far as the Pacific.

PROOF:

J.K. Hosmer says of the first journey made across the American continent by civilized men, " Of these, three were Spaniards, and the fourth, a person upon whom it is worth while to dwell for a moment. He was a Negro, the first of his race to reach the valley, contemporary with the earliest Europeans." Of Estevanico's expedition to Arizona and New Mexico, he says, "Fray Marcos sent the Negro forward as better fitted than anyone to prepare the way." (A Short History of the Mississippi Valley, pp. 25-27, Boston, 1901.)

For the account of the actual journey, see: Narrative of Nunez Cabeca de Vaca, N.Y. 1922. Also, J.E. Bolton: Chronicles of America, Vol. 23.

BLACK FACT:

Imhotep of Ancient Egypt, was the real Father of Medicine. He lived about 2300 b.c. Greece and Rome had their knowledge of medicine from him. In Rome he was worshipped as the Prince of Peace in the form of a black man. His Ethiopian portraits show him a 'Negro.' Imhotep was also Prime Minister to King Zoser as well as the foremost architect of his time. The saying, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die," has been traced to him. Hippocrates, the so-called "Father of Medicine," lived 2,000 years after Imhotep.

PROOF:

Gerald Massey says of Imhotep, "The child-Christ remained a starrily bejewelled blackamoor as the typical healer in Rome. Jesus the divine healer, does not retain the black complexion of Iu-em-hotep (Imhotep) in the canonical Gospels, but he does in the Church of Rome when represented as a little black bambino." ...(I cut a major portion out here for brevity. For those who would like the entire passage, E-mail me. BLC).

(Continuing)

"Surely the profoundest sigh of an ever-warring world went up to heaven in the cult of Iu-em-hotep (Imhotep) who was worshipped as the giver of rest, the Kamite prince of peace." (Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, Vol. II, p. 754, London, 1907.)

The statuettes of Imhotep in the Cairo Museum show his Negroid features. They are reproduced in G. Daressy's, Catalogue General des Antiquities Egyptiennes du Musee du Caire, Plate IV, 38,045 to 38,050, and Plate V.

COMMENT: Speaking of Christ having been black, it was surprising to me how many white Spaniards in the Barcelona area of Spain INSIST that Christ was black. During my visit there in 1982, I went to Montsarrat, a monestary just outside of Barcelona, where the Madonna and Christ child are depicted as 'coal' black. (BLC).

BLACK FACT:

White American slave-holders used to induce white women to marry 'Negro' slaves in order to hold the women slaves for life.

PROOF:

In Sept. 1664, Maryland passed a law that any white woman who married a 'Negro' should serve the master of such slave "for life." Slave-holders took advantage of this law to induce the white women, some of whom were recent arrivals, to marry the "Negroes." MacCormac says, "Instead of preventing such marriages this law enabled avaricious and unprincipled masters to convert many of their (white) servants into slaves." In 1681, the Legislature was forced to issue the following law: "Divers freeborn English or white women sometimes by the instigation, procurement, and connivance of their master.... and always to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires....do intermarry with 'Negroes' and other slaves, be it enacted that if any master....having any freeborn English or white woman servant in their possession or property, shall by any instigation, procurement, knowledge, permission or contrivance," cause her to marry a slave she should be free at once and the master should pay a fine of "10,000 lbs. of tobacco." (Archives of Maryland, Vol. I, pp. 433-34; and Vol. III, pp. 203-04, also Johns Hopkins University Studies in Hist. & Pol. Science, No. 3 & 4.) What is true of Maryland was true of other states.

BLACK FACTS 3

The following is the third installment of BLACKFACTS, interesting and little-known facts about blacks in the diaspora. The facts and proofs are taken out of J.A. Roger's work, 100 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THE NEGRO, WITH COMPLETE PROOF, written in the 1940's and published 1957.

BLACKFACT:

Dr. Daniel Williams, Chicago surgeon who died in 1931, was the first to perform a successful operation on the human heart.

PROOF:

Medical Record, March 27, 1897. The patient was James Cornish. Dr. Williams lived in Chicago. I (J.A. Rogers) knew him personally for many years.

BLACKFACT:

Eugene Chen, one of the most dynamic political figures of the present century, and Minister of Foreign Affairs for China in 1927, was born of Chinese-'Negro' parentage in Trinidad, West Indies, in 1878. He was also secretary to Dr. Sun Yat Sen, first president of China.

PROOF:

Vincent Sheean says in part of Eugene Chen, "The Foreign Minister was a remarkable man.... Physically and in some ways of speech, Mr. Chen reminded me of the French politician, Malvy; his complacency was like that of Austen Chamberlain; his delight in his own language and the care that he took to see that it was written down in its baroque magnificence

suggested Mussolini. He was theatrical as Briand without any of the old fox's charm; he was (as) ingratiating as Streseman, as bitter as Poincare. In short Mr. Chen was a politician.... Mr. Chen had been born a British subject at Trinidad, West Indies. His name as a British subject was not Chen. He was of mixed race, part Chinese, part 'Negro'.... He had chosen his wife from the 'Negro' race, and in his four charming children the Chinese strain seemed almost to have vanished." Personal History, pp. 205-07, N. Y., 1935. John Gunther, "Inside Asia," pp. 259-60, 264,269, New York, 1939. Chen's real name was Akam.

BLACKFACT: General Dodds

General A. Dodds, a Senegalese, was France's best known soldier, prior to the First World War. In 1901, as the senior general he commanded for a brief time the Allied Army - white Americans, Germans, British, French, and Japanese - against the Boxers in China. The Germans, unable to tolerate that, hurriedly sent out a field-marshal.

PROOF:

General A.A. Dodds, conqueror of Dahomey, and France's greatest colonial soldier, was born in St. Louis, Senegal, West Africa, of 'mulatto' parentage on both sides of his family. In color he was very dark. The New York Tribune, April 17, 1910, said that he was so popular that he could easily have seized the power in France as "the entire nation irrespective of party or politics turned out to welcome him and to such an extent did he become an object of popular enthusiasm that there is no doubt that he might easily have established himself in the role of military dictator had it not been for his loyalty to the republic," yet it adds, he "would not have been permitted to drink at the same bar with a white man (in America) and in many states of the Union would not be permitted to ride in the same street car." Gen. Dodds was a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, the highest possible grade in that order. He died in 1922. See F. Desplantes: Le General Dodds; Larousse Mensuel, Oct. 1922; and the works on the conquest of Dahomey.

BLACKFACT:

In 1787 while a party of 351 freed 'Negroes' was aboard ship at Portsmouth England, enroute to Sierra Leone, West Africa, the authorities brought on board sixty-two white women, prostitutes and others, whom they wished to get rid of, and married them to as many men, and sent them off to be the future mothers of the colony.

PROOF:

Utting says: "They sailed in 1787 from Portsmouth with 60 white women whom the Government wished to exile; the latter were made drunk, carried on board, and married to the 'Negroes' without their consent being asked." (F.A.J. Utting: Sierra Leone, p. 81, London, 1931).

Mrs. A. M. Falconbridge, who talked with these women in Sierra Leone says that they "were mostly of that description of persons who walk the streets of London and support themselves by the earning of prostitution; that men were employed to collect and conduct them to Wapping where they were intoxicated with liquor, then inveigled on board ship and married to Black men whom they had never seen before." (Voyages to Sierra Leone in 1791-2-3, pp. 64-66).

BLACKFACT:

Psalms that read like those of the Bible were written by a Pharaoh, Amenophis IV, better known as "Akhenaton, the Heretic King," 1300 B.C.or more than 400 years before David was born. Akhenaton, who was the father of Tut-Ankh-Amen, was extremely 'Negro' in type. He is called "the most remarkable of the Pharaohs."

PROOF:

For a comparison of one of the Psalms of Akhenaton with the 104th Psalm in the Bible see Arthur Weigall: LIFE AND TIMES OF AKHENATON, pp. 134-136. New York, 1923. Also J.H. Breasted HISTORY OF EGYPT, p. 373. New York, 1926.

BLACKFACT:

On November 15, 218 B.C., Hannibal, a full-blooded 'Negro,' marching through conquered territory in Spain and France, performed the astounding feat of crossing the Alps. With only 26,000 of his original force of 82,000 men remaining, he defeated Rome, the mightiest military power of that age, who had a million men, in every battle for the next fifteen years. Hannibal is the father of military strategy. His tactics are still taught in the leading military academies of the United States, Enland, France, Germany and other lands.

PROOF:

Hannibal is usually depicted as a white man, but his coins in the British Museum and the Museo Kercheriano, Rome, show him to have been an African of purest type with rings in his ears. Col. Hennebert, perhaps the leading authority on Hannibal, declares that none of the several differing portraits now exhibited as Hannibal is he, "We do not possess any authentic portrait of Hannibal," he says. (Histoire d'Annibal, Vol. I, p. 495, Paris, 1870). These coins were struck by Hannibal while he was in Italy. In the absence of other information the most logical argument is that they bore his own effigy, the more so, as the several kinds of them bear the same likeness. Above all, let us remember that he was an African.

That's it for now. Lot's more to come.

PEACE,

Byron L. Crudup

From J.A. Rogers' YOUR HISTORY, a special reprint edition from Black Classic Press. Artist, George Lee.

From J.A. Rogers' YOUR HISTORY, a special reprint edition from Black Classic Press. Artist, George Lee.

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