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Books
by Michele Valerie Ronnick
Cicero's "Paradoxa Stoicorum"/
The
Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough /
The Works of William Sanders Scarborough
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The
Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough
An American Journey from
Slavery to Scholarship
Edited with an Introduction by
Michelle Valerie Ronnick
Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This fascinating
book tells the remarkable story of
William Sanders
Scarborough's
rise from his origins in slavery to a distinguished career as
the first African American professionals scholar of classical
languages and literatures. Michele Vaerie Ronnick is to be
commended for making this compelling account available to a wide
reading public.
--Valerie Smith, Woodrow Wilson
Professor of Literature and director of the Program in African
American Studies, Princeton University
Expertly presented
by Michele Ronnick,
Scarborough's autobiography constitutes an
important and timely contribution to the history of Classical
Studies in America and to the story of African American
intellectual life in the century after Emancipation. Scarborough
believed passionately that classical education was a critical
component of African American advancement and understood that a
liberal education is liberating and the property of all free
human beings.
--Jenny Strauss Clay, professor of
classics, University of Virginia
This autobiography
presents to a new generation the career of
William Sanders
Scarborough . . . a precursor to W.E.B. Du Bois, and someone
whom the famed intellectual admired and emulated. The
complicated ties between Scarborough and the A.M.E.-sponsored
Wilberforce University showed that those who valued the life of
the mind drew substantial support and encouragement from black
religious and educational institutions. Scholars in the
classics, history, African American Studies, and other subjects
will find much relevant information in this valuable volume.
--Dennis C. Dickerson, professor of
history, Vanderbilt University, historiographer of AME Church
William Sanders
Scarborough, a respected classicist when the classics
represented the ultimate in learned knowledge, embodied the
living refutation of white supremacy in the late nineteenth
century. The twentieth century was all too quick to forget him.
Michele Ronnick's edition of Scarborough's autobiography
brings him back to life, with all its promise, achievement, and
frustration. We need to know it all.
--Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor
of American History, Princeton University
It is uplifting to
discover in this fascinating life, so compellingly narrated, a
refutation of the racist view that a black man was genetically
incapable of learning Greek, and at the same time so clearly to
see precisely the effects of such learning on this likable and
able man. Like the Roman poet Horace, he too the son of an
ex-slave, Scarborough reveals to us a personality imbued with
culture, humanism, and compassion.
--Richard F. Thomas, professor of Greek
and Latin, Harvard University, trustee of Loeb Classical Library
William Sanders
Scarboroughshould be an exemplar for any aspiring intellectual.
Under conditions that can be, at best, described as absurd, he
forged an amazing career and life. Michele Ronnick has done us a
great service in bringing this grand figure back to us.
--Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Princeton
University, inaugural winner of the MLA William Sanders
Scarborough book prize for outstanding work in black literature
or culture.
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This illuminating autobiography traces
Scarborough's path out of slavery in Macon, Georgia, to a
prolific scholarly career that culminated with his presidency of
Wilberforce University. Despite the racism he encountered as he
struggled to establish a place in higher education for African
Americans, Scarborough was an exemplary scholar, particularly in
the field of classical studies. He was the first African
American member of the Modern Language Association, a
forty-four-year member of the American Philological Association,
and a true champion of higher education.
Michele Valerie Ronnick contextualizes
Scarborough's narrative through extensive notes and by exploring
a wide variety of sources such as census records, church
registries, period newspapers, and military and university
records. This book is indispensable to anyone interested in the
history of intellectual endeavor in America, Africana Studies,
and classical studies as well as those familiar with the
associations and institutions that welcomed and valued
Scarborough.
Michele Valerie Ronnick is associate professor of
Greek and Latin at Wayne State University.
posted 24 January 2005
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updated 21 November 2007 |
