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Books on Africa
and Africans
The World and Africa
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Things Fall Apart /
Mandela’s Way /
Leadership without a Moral Purpose
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Who Fears Death
Hottentot Venus: A Novel
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Incognegro: A Memoir of
Exile and Apartheid
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Dreams of Africa in Alabama /
Diary
of a Lost Girl
Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey
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Darfur: a short history of a long war /
The Land Question in South
Africa
The Autobiography of an Unknown
South African /
Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works /
Becoming Ebony
The Osu Caste
Discrimination in Igboland /
Lumumba Speaks: Speeches and Writings, 1958-1961 /
Before the Palm Could Bloom
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
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Amy Ashwood Garvey: Pan Africanist
Feminist /
The Prophet of Zongo Street
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The Autobiography of an Unknown
South African
By Naboth Mokgatle
Reviews
To read this book is to know, not
only intellectually but in one's very bones, what it was to be a
young black man in South Africa in the early years of this
century.—Donald Heiney
This autobiography, rich in human
interest, is an important document of south African social and
political life. Fascinating, moving, and revealing, it is a
great autobiography.—American Political Science Review
This has to be one of the saddest
books written in a long time -- sad for the proud and sensitive
man who wrote it, and sad for us in the so-called Western World,
of which South Africa is very much a part. . . . The author
writes clear and at times powerful prose. . . . using a first
person narrative style and the medium of autobiography in order
to set down a long essay on his nation's social and political
history. . . . His unwillingness to become violent with rage or
mute with despair is altogether remarkable, and no doubt at
times will be beyond the comprehension of the white American and
European readers he had addressed himself to in this powerful
and grim book.—New Republic
It is a measured, patient book. It
evokes the spirit of Ecclesiastes, 3:1, "To everything
there is a season." It sweeps evenly over forty-three years
of a life in which the transition of an entire people is
reflected; from substantially autonomous tribal life through a
stage of work on white farms and in white villages . . . to the
present era of the urban job, the barracks and slums, and the
influx of control offices, and the tank reinforcements of the
modern South African police state.—African Historical Studies
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Doctors
(excerpt from by Naboth Mokgatle)
I admit, too, that an African can hardly go against his
medicine man's advice. They have a deep-rooted belief that he
knows what he is talking about. They doubt that he can tell them
something he knows is not true. They doubt that he can tell
something he knows is not true.
They not only respect him, but honour him as well. They
believe that through his work and devotion they survived many
tragedies. This is something deep seated in their feelings,
which even in this half of the twentieth century still dominates
the Africans, educated and uneducated alike. How does an African
medicine man examine those who consult him? Does he know what he
is talking about? How does he select his medicines, poisonous
ones from unpoisonous ones?
They keep small bones from sheep, goats, and other small
animals in a small animal skin handbag, called moraba,
and the bones are called taola (plural, ditaola).
A person being examined is seated on a mat or skin on the floor,
facing the doctor, who throws the bones on the floor and begins
to speak, looking at the bones.
After two or three throws, the doctor then asks his patient
to throw ditaola, the examining bones, and blow his
breath on to them, saying among other things, "I am here
sick, but I don't know what's wrong with me. Tell me, and choose
the medicine which will cure me."
Thereafter the doctor will begin to read the bones, which he
claims tell him what is wrong with his patient. But before he
does that, he would ask the patient to agree or to disagree with
the findings of his bones. He would emphasize that what he says
is not from him, but what is conveyed to him by the bones.
During the examination period, doctor and patient would agree
and disagree.
At the end of agreements and disagreements the same procedure
is followed, this time in search of the medicine which would
cure the patient. Whether the ditaola do talk or not, I
cannot tell, but what I can say is that very seldom have I heard
of a medicine man giving his patients poisonous medicines during
his work of trying to cure them.
Medicine men of my tribe have a saying that medicines do not
cure everyone, only lucky ones.
What sort of medicine do the African medicine men use in
treating their patients? They use herbs, some boiled and others
ground into powder forms. These are usually taken with light,
thin porridge, or beer. In the case of boiled ones, only the
water or juice derived from them is drunk. Before he leaves his
patient with his medicines, the doctor would boil them first and
drink some of it in the presence of the patient and those who
would nurse the sick person. Powdered ones he would mix with
beer or porridge and take in full view of his patient and
others.
African doctors in their own interests and reputation make it
a rule to visit their patients every three days to see how the
sick person progresses, or whether a change of medicine is
necessary. in the old days fees were paid in the form of cattle,
sheep or goats, depending on the seriousness of the sickness.
They were never paid in advance, but after the sick person was
cured. Today the pattern has changed: money plays a large part,
and people pay for services, not for cure.
That is why Africans say doctors of today are not like those
of yesterday.
Medicine men of my tribe, in combination with those of other
tribes in South Africa, stand firm in their claim that the
accusation that they are witchdoctors who have no idea of what
they are doing is baseless. They say they are being condemned
without having been tested to see how they are able to help the
sick. They have combined with others throughout the country and
demand recognition from the state by way of registration. They
ask that, before registration is effected, those who in need of
it should go through thorough testing by a group of doctors who
have undergone the test before them and proved their skill and
knowledge of medicine.
For year they have said to the state: "Test us; give us
tasks; give us sick people in hospitals, mental hospitals and
other institutions, to see whether we can help or not."
Their demands are refused and the accusations that they are not
doctors but witchdoctors continue.
My people call a doctor ngaka (plural, dingaka).
They are organized on a provincial as well as on a national
basis. The name of their organization is the African Dingaka
Association. They say that if their request for registration can
be effected the people will get a better and sounder service
from the dingaka, because no ngaka who has
not been tested will have the courage to say to a patient,
"I can help you," when he knows that he has not been
tested or registered and has no authority to treat the sick.
They point out further that, in the days of their
forefathers, each year young doctors were called to the Chief's
place to meet old ones, and the experienced tested the
inexperienced in the presence of the Chief and the elders of the
tribe.
They complain that the Chief's powers have been taken away
such gatherings are no longer taking place and people are not
well trained in the art of throwing ditaola, and the use
of medicine-herbs go about presenting themselves to the people
as doctors. Source:
The Autobiography of an Unknown
South African by Naboth Mokgatle. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1975.Winner of the 1971 Anisfield-Wolf
Award in Race Relations * *
* * *
| Family
My name is Monyadioe Moreleba Naboth
Mokgatle, I was born in a tribal village called Phokeng in
the district of Rustenburg, Transvaal Province, South Africa, on
the first of April nineteen-hundred and eleven. I was one of the
three sons of Sethare Hebron and Salome Mokgatle, and the
last-born in the family. My parents had eight children, three
boys and five girls. I do not know when they married, but my
mother told me that in eighteen-ninety-six, at the time when the
Bafokeng tribe lost most of their cattle through cattle sickness
which swept the tribe and the surrounding tribal lands, their first child, a daughter called
Nkatlholeng, was a baby of about nine or twelve months.
My mother was a Christian and my father was
not. Because of that, their marriage was performed in both
Christian and non-Christian traditions. The ceremony, according
to my mother, was held in a Lutheran church at Hermannsburg
Mission and at my father's home in the traditional way. |
 |
My
father's parents, like all African parents, paid bogadi
(dowry) for their son's bride. Without the payment of bogadi,
African law and tradition would not have recognised their union
as a legal one. Source:
The Autobiography of an Unknown
South African by Naboth Mokgatle. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1975.Winner of the 1971 Anisfield-Wolf
Award in Race Relations
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Runoko Rashidi Speaks in Nigeria
Interviewed by Lola Balola
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Nigeria
50-Year
Anniversary—BBC
My Country
Documentary—Lagos
Stories
Lagos Story
1 of 3 /
Lagos Story
2 of 3 /
Lagos Story
3 of 3
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Escape from Slavery: The True Story
of My Ten Years in Captivity and My
Journey to Freedom in America
By
Francis Bok
Slave: My True Story
By
Mende Nazer
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Word, Image, and the New Negro
By
Anne Carroll
The
author's analysis of how the illustrations
amplify and create tension with the writing
and how they empower and sometimes
disempower their subjects is the first
critical work in this important area.
Generously illustrated. Highly recommended.—
Choice
In
tracing the formation of the idea of the New
Negro through the vital interplay of
literature, art, and social criticism,
Word, Image, and the New Negro
makes a superb contribution to scholarship
on the Harlem Renaissance, the history of
African American publishing, and modern
American culture.—Eric
J. Sundquist, author of
To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of
American Literature |
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The first detailed comparative analysis of the mix
of text and illustration in the major African
American magazines and anthologies of the 1910s and
1920s. It is a major advance in our understanding of
what amounted to innovative collage forms
articulated to race and politics. Carefully
theorized and rich with persuasive readings, the
book should appeal not only to literary scholars but
also to anyone interested in modernity and the
little magazine.—Cary
Nelson, author of
Revolutionary Memory
A very welcome contribution to the contemporary
rethinking of the period. By calling our attention
to the images that consistently and significantly
appeared alongside some of the well-remembered texts
of the Harlem Renaissance, Carroll foregrounds the
very modernity that the New Negro Movement sought
self-consciously to embrace.... Carroll's eye for
the particular will have both a helpful and
inspiring effect on readers who want to continue
building on the work she has done here.—Net
Reviews
This book focuses on the collaborative illustrated
volumes published during the Harlem Renaissance, in
which African Americans used written and visual
texts to shape ideas about themselves and to
redefine African American identity. Anne Elizabeth
Carroll argues that these volumes show how
participants in the movement engaged in the
processes of representation and identity formation
in sophisticated and largely successful ways. Though
they have received little scholarly attention, these
volumes constitute an important aspect of the
cultural production of the Harlem Renaissance.
Word, Image, and the New Negro marks the
beginning of a long-overdue recovery of this legacy
and points the way to a greater understanding of the
potential of texts to influence social change.—amazon.com
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Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the
Making of the New Negro
By
Barbara Foley
A carefully argued,
nuanced presentation of the genesis of the
Harlem Renaissance. Foley's breadth of
knowledge in American radical history is
impressive.—American
Literature
Foley's book is a lucid
and useful one... A heavyweight
intervention, it prompts significant
rethinking of the ideological and
representational strategies structuring the
era.—Journal
of American Studies
Foley
does a masterful job of analyzing the racial
and political theories of a wide range of
black and white figures, from the radical
Left to the racist Right... Students of
African American political and cultural
history in the early twentieth century
cannot ignore this book. Essential.—Choice
In our
current time of crisis, when ruling classes
busily promote nationalism and racism to
conceal the class nature of their
inter-imperialist rivalries, one can only
hope that readers will not be daunted by
Foley's dedication to analyzing the
ideological milieu of the 1920s that
contributed to the eclipse of New Negro
radicalism by New Negro nationalism.—Science
& Society |
With the New
Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s
was a landmark decade in African American political
and cultural history, characterized by an upsurge in
racial awareness and artistic creativity. In
Spectres of 1919 Barbara Foley traces the
origins of this revolutionary era to the turbulent
year 1919, identifying the events and trends in
American society that spurred the black community to
action and examining the forms that action took as
it evolved.
Unlike prior
studies of the Harlem Renaissance, which see 1919 as
significant mostly because of the geographic migrations
of blacks to the North, Spectres of 1919 looks at
that year as the political crucible from which the
radicalism of the 1920s emerged. Foley draws from a
wealth of primary sources, taking a bold new approach to
the origins of African American radicalism and adding
nuance and complexity to the understanding of a
fascinating and vibrant era.—amazon.com
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The Black Power Movement
Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era
Edited by
Peniel E.
Joseph
Sammy Younge, Jr. The First Black College Student
to Die in the Black Liberation Movement
By
James Forman
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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