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Black History Heroes Book Recommendations



Here is a comprehensive list of notable historians of African descent, along with some of their published works. This list is not presented in any particular order of importance. 

1. J.A. Rogers (Joel Augustus Rogers)

  • Born: January 6, 1880, Negril, Jamaica
  • Died: March 26, 1966, New York City, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • Sex and Race (1941)
    • The World's Great Men of Color (1946)
    • J.A. Rogers' History of the Negro (1936)
    • From Superman to Man (1917)

2. Carter G. Woodson

  • Born: December 19, 1875, New Canton, Virginia, USA
  • Died: April 3, 1950, Washington, D.C., USA
  • Notable Works:
    • The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933)
    • The Negro in Our History (1922)
    • A Century of Negro Migration (1918)
    • The African Background Outlined (1936)

3. John Hope Franklin

  • Born: January 2, 1915, Rentiesville, Oklahoma, USA
  • Died: March 25, 2009, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (1947)
    • Race and History (1989)
    • The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (1999)
    • The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century (2006)

4. W.E.B. Du Bois

  • Born: February 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA
  • Died: August 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana
  • Notable Works:
    • The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
    • The Philadelphia Negro (1899)
    • Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
    • The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races (magazine, 1910–1934)

5. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

  • Born: January 24, 1874, Santurce, Puerto Rico
  • Died: June 10, 1938, Harlem, New York, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • The Negro Digs Up His Past (1921)
    • The Black Man in the World (1925)
    • The Afro-American in the World (1933)

6. Yosef Ben-Jochannan

  • Born: December 31, 1918, Ethiopia
  • Died: March 19, 2015, New York City, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • We the Black Jews: Witness to the Tribes (2003)
    • African Origins of the Major "Western" Religions (1993)
    • The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1972)
    • Black Man of the Nile and His Family (1972)

7. Chancellor Williams

  • Born: August 22, 1898, Bennettsville, South Carolina, USA
  • Died: December 7, 1992, Washington, D.C., USA
  • Notable Works:
    • The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. (1971)
    • The Rebirth of African Civilization (1987)
    • The African Origin of Civilization (1991)

8. John Henrik Clarke

  • Born: January 1, 1915, Union Springs, Alabama, USA
  • Died: July 16, 1998, New York City, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • Africans at the Crossroads (1991)
    • Christopher Columbus and the African Holocaust (1991)
    • The Book of African Names (1996)
    • Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa (1987)

9. Merze Tate

  • Born: May 9, 1905, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
  • Died: 1996, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • The United States and the Caribbean (1941)
    • The International Relations of the Caribbean (1947)
    • The United States and International Organization (1948)

10. Henry Louis Gates Jr.

  • Born: September 16, 1950, Piedmont, West Virginia, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988)
    • Colored People: A Memoir (1994)
    • The African American National Biography (2008, co-editor)
    • Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019)

11. Dorothy B. Porter

  • Born: February 25, 1938, Washington, D.C., USA
  • Died: November 2008, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 (1999)
    • The History of American Socialism (1977)
    • The Politics of Black Women's Health: A Historical Perspective (2000)

12. James Monroe Trotter

  • Born: September 17, 1842, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  • Died: February 23, 1892, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • Music and Some Highly Musical People (1878)
    • The Negro in Music and Art (1915)
    • The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (1885)

13. Ivan Van Sertima

  • Born: January 9, 1935, Georgetown, Guyana
  • Died: May 25, 2009, New Jersey, USA
  • Notable Works:
    • They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (1976)
    • African Presence in Early America (1985)
    • The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1972)

14. Cheikh Anta Diop

  • Born: December 29, 1923, Diourbel, Senegal
  • Died: February 7, 1986, Dakar, Senegal
  • Notable Works:
    • The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1974)
    • Precolonial Black Africa (1960)
    • Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology (1981)
    • The Cultural Unity of Black Africa (1991)

This list highlights the significant contributions of historians from Africa and the African diaspora. Their works have specifically shaped the understanding of the global history and culture of Black people of African descent. If you have read any of these books and would like to make a statements regarding the book, do leave this in the comments. If you have additional recommendations of notable historians, leave them in the comments for others who enjoy these historical topics.  

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