Africa's Gift to Americas

Florida: Helga M. Rogers, 1961. First Edition. Small quarto with blue boards; ex-library; dust jacket; 272 pp: photographs (b&w); 29 cm Ex-library with usual insitutional markings. Fair to general, in Very Good dust jacket; boards show light wear and cell tape to edges; pages show faint water damage, must foxing, and toning; binding tight overall; dust jacket is clean and sharp, dust jacket is protected in archival mylar. A decent reading/reference copy. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780819575500

"Joel Augustus Rogers' "African's Gift to America" is a significant work that challenges the notion of racial superiority and highlights the contributions of African people to the world. The book, originally published in 1959 and revised in 1989, asserts that Africans have made more of a mark on history than previously acknowledged. Rogers, a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and historian, dedicated his life to uncovering facts about African ancestry and refuting racist beliefs. He emphasized that the color of skin does not determine intellectual genius and highlighted the flourishing black civilizations in Africa during antiquity. The book is a classic work of black study, shining a light on the accomplishments of African people within Western history." --Publisher | Rogers was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and self-taught historian born in Jamaica on September 6, 1880, who emigrated to the United States in 1906 and became a naturalized citizen while living in Chicago and later Harlem, New York. His work in the first half of the twentieth century focused on illuminating the history of Africa and the African diaspora, challenging prevailing racist notions about race and highlighting the contributions of people of African descent to world history. Rogers wrote extensively for Black newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier, New York Amsterdam News, and others, and he published numerous books including From “Superman” to Man (1917), 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro (1934), Sex and Race (1941–44), and World’s Great Men of Color (1946–47). He also produced an illustrated history column titled “Your History” that appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier for many years. Rogers’s work was widely read in his time and helped popularize Africana history, although some of his assertions went beyond what mainstream scholarship supports; he died in New York City on March 26, 1966.