John Henrik Clarke
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John Henrik Clarke (January 1, 1915 - July 16, 1998), born John Henry Clark in Union Springs, Alabama to John ((Doctor)) and Willie Ella (Mays) Clarke, was a Pan-Africanist, author, poet, historian, journalist, lecturer and teacher. Clarke was one of the most significant influences on the search for the role Africans play in World History.
Clarke was the author of numerous articles that have appeared in leading scholarly journals. He also served as the author, contributor, or editor of 24 books. In 1968 along with the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association, Clarke founded the African Heritage Studies Association. In 1969 he was appointed as the founding chairman of the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Department at Hunter College in New York City. Clarke was most known and highly regarded for his lifelong devotion to studying and documenting the histories and contributions of African peoples in Africa and the diaspora.
Clarke is often quoted as stating that "History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but more importantly, what they must be."
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[edit] A Search For Identity
Clarke proclaimed his own search for identity to have begun as a child simply trying to understand the world around him. He considered his great grandmother "Mom Mary", the family historian, to have been his first teacher. She told him and his siblings stories about their family, its resistance to slavery.
As a child Clarke's father took their family to Columbus, Georgia. There he went to school for the first time and became the first among his family's nine children to learn to read. As an autodidact, he accomplished that feat "by picking up signs, grocery handbills...and by studying the signboards." Clarke taught the junior class of his Sunday school by the age of ten and read the Bible to old ladies in his community.
Clarke's search for his people began in the Bible, and that search began with questions, such as "why are all the characters -— even those who, like Moses, were born in Africa —- white?" Having read the depiction of Christ "as swarthy and with hair like sheep's wool" he wondered why the church's depiction showed Christ as blond and blue-eyed. As he read more he asked more questions: "Where was the hair like sheep's wool? Where was the swarthy complexion? How did Moses become so white? If he went down to Ethiopia to marry Zeporah, why was Zeporah so white? Who painted the world white?" It was then that his life-long search for self-definition in world history began.
Clarke's best remembrance of his school years were of his first teacher, Evelena Taylor, in Columbus, Georgia. She was the first to teach him to believe in himself by simply stating to him "I believe in you." During his last year of grammar school Clarke "began to receive some of the privileges in the school that generally went to the light-complected youngsters who were called "The Light Brigade." That group consisted of children of professional blacks many of whom had a light complexion. Clarke led the so-called "The Dark Brigade" or poorer children. He received the privilege to ring the bell in the school as the best student.
Clarke's systematic search for the role of people from Africa in history began when a lawyer for whom he worked told him that he "came from a people who had no history but, that if I persevered and obeyed the laws, my people might one day make history."
One day during high school Clarke was given the responsibility to hold the books and papers of a guest lecturer. One of the books was entitled The New Negro edited by Alain Locke. In that book Clarke found the essay "The Negro Digs Up His Past," by Arthur Schomburg. It was then he realized he "came from a people with a history older even than that of Europe." Years later, at the age of seventeen, he would search for and find Schomburg in what was then New York's 135th street library. Clarke impatiently told Schomburg he wanted "to know the history of my people." To which Schomburg replied, "What you are calling African history and Negro history is nothing but the missing pages of world history. You will have to know general history to understand these specific aspects of history." In his later life he traveled the world. Clarke was totally blind in the last remaining years of his life. He expressed that he would like to be remembered as an educator.
Clarke lectured and held professorships at universities worldwide, including the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, and in African and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City. He received honorary degrees from numerous institutions and served as consultant and adviser to African and Caribbean heads of state. In 1997 he was the subject of a major documentary directed by filmmaker Saint Claire Bourne and underwritten by the Hollywood star Wesley Snipes.
[edit] The Harlem History Club (The Blyden Society)
As a self-professed person who began his career as a writer of fiction, Clarke did not undergo the formal academic training of history in a university setting. Instead he learned through the African American community institution, the Harlem History Club. As one of the youngest members of The Harlem History Club, Clarke says,
"My formal introduction to history began in Harlem in the 1930s. I was active in the Harlem history club at the Harlem YMCA under Willis N. Huggins. I was fortunate enough to have met Arthur Schomburg and remembered reading his famous essay "The Negro Digs up His Past" while I was still in Georgia. I can say that it was Arthur Schomburg who taught me the interrelation of African history to world history. Willis N. Huggins taught me the political meaning of history. I would go to the lectures of William Leo Hansberry on the philosophical meaning of black history. The Harlem History Club was literally a graduate level history department with some of the most important figures in black history right there in the middle of Harlem. I learned all that I could.
Some of the club's publications would include John G. (Glover) Jackson's and Willis Huggins's A Guide to the Study of African History. In this work, the references on Africa alone made it an important contribution. Besides his essay "["The Negro Digs up His Past]]", Schomburg wrote a book entitled The New Negro. Huggins and Jackson later wrote an Introduction to African Civilization. I was being introduced to material and books I had never seen or heard of before. This would lead me to read more deeply. It might surprise you that H.G. Wells' Outline of History, despite its white supremacist views, is a good outline of history. It led me to read other works in history like Spingler's Decline of the West and the early works of Will Durant—the seven-volume Story of Philosophy.
John G. (Glover) Jackson's works still have a great influence on me and this is evident in my inquiry into the role of religion as a force in history and the African origins of the legend of the Garden of Eden. He was one of the earliest scholars who attempted to separate myth from truth in biblical history. See his book Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth as well as his pamphlet Christianity Before Christ—later made into a book. His writing indicates that in some cases biblical stories were not true and were not meant to be true. The bible was meant to provide fables and myth to illustrate the truth. If you understand the truth from the illustrations, the bible has done what it was meant to do. For example, the story of the Exodus is told to illustrate that, at a given hour, God will come to the rescue of his people. It is a story on the ultimate goodness of God to rescue his people in their most desperate time. If you have real faith in yourself and God, the story is nothing more than that and has served its purpose.
Of particular value to me were William Hansberry's Sources for the Study of Ethiopian History and the writings of Charles Seiford, especially his unpublished "Who Are the Ethiopians?" In addition to the historic readings, I enjoyed a lot of good general writings such as the early fiction of Richard Wright. In fact, my writing style has been influenced by the white writers such as Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and other great writers who tried to take their writing into other dimensions that otherwise would not have been."
Asides receiving honorary degrees from numerous institutions and universities he served as consultant and adviser to African and Caribbean heads of state.
[edit] In His Own Words
by John Henrik Clarke
On January 1, 1915 when I was born in Union Springs, Alabama, little black Alabama boys were not fully licensed to imagine themselves as conduits of social and political change. I remember when I was about three years old, I fell off something. I do not know what it was but I remember Uncle Henry putting some water on my head and I really do think that instead of the "fall" knocking something out of me, it knocked something into me. In fact, they called me "Bubba" and because I had the mind to do so, I decided to add the "e" to the family name "Clark" and changed the spelling of "Henry" to "Henrik," after the Scandinavian rebel playwright, Henrik Ibsen. I liked his spunk and the social issues he addressed in "A Doll's House." I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived. My mother would go to the houses of these "folks" and pick up her laundry bundles and, pull them back home in a little red wagon, with me sitting on top. At the end of the week, she would collect her pay of about $3.00. My siblings are based in the varied ordering and descriptives that characterize traditional African diasporic families. They are Eddie Mary Clarke Hobbs, Walter Clarke, Hugo Oscar Clarke, Earline Clarke, Flossie Clarke (deceased), and Nathaniel Clarke (deceased). Together, in varied times and forms, we have known love. My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together. But, we have all felt the warm rains of Spring, and felt the crispness of the fallen leaves in Fall together. As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of my people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers. My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in spirit.
I am a Nationalist, and a Pan-Africanist, first and foremost. I was well grounded in history before ever taking a history course. I did not spend much formal time in school—I had to work. I caddied for Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley long before they became Generals or President, for that matter. Just between you and me, Bradley tipped better than Eisenhower did. When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms Harris, convinced be that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with Georgia on My Mind. Instead, my best friend, Roscoe Hester use to sit with me spellbound, as I detailed the history of Timbuktu. I soon took a slow moving train out of Georgia because I did not want to end up like Richard (Dick) Wright's Black Boy. I came to New York, via Chicago and then I enlisted in the army and earned the rank of Master Sergeant. Later, I selected Harlem as the laboratory where I would search for the true history of my people. I could not stomach the lies of world history, so I took some strategic steps in order to build a life of scholarship and activism in New York. I began to pave strong roads toward what I envisioned as a mighty walk where I would initiate, inspire and help found organizations to elevate my people. I am thinking specifically of The Harlem's Writers Guild, Freedomways, Presence African, African Heritage Studies Association, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, National Council of Black Studies, Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization. I became an energetic participant in circles like Harlem Writer's Workshop, studied history and world literature at New York and Columbia Universities and at the League for Professional Writers. And, much like the Egyptians taught Plato and Socrates what they eventually knew, I was privileged to sit at the feet of great warriors like Arthur Schomburg, Willis Huggins, Charles Seiffert, William Leo Hansberry, John G. (Glover) Jackson and Paul Robeson. Before I go any further, let me assure you that I always made attempts at structuring a holistic life. My three children are products of that reality. My oldest daughter, who kind of grew up with me, became a warm and wonderful young woman. Unfortunately, she preceded me in her passage. Part of my life's mission has been to deliver a message of renewal, redemption and rededication for young people all over the world and I hope the walk has afforded me that claim. So, now and in my traditionally fatherly way, I appeal to my two younger children, Sonni Kojo and Nzingha Marie to appreciate my commitment to them and the rest of the world. Sonni, in forming your identity, I called upon the spirit of Sonni Ali, the great Emperor of the Sudanic Empires to anoint you; and Nzingha, my second daughter, I reached back for the spirit of the warrior Queen Nzingha to lay her hands upon you. I have always felt blessed by the many nieces and nephews who have surrounded me: John H. Clarke, Charlie Mae Rowell, Walter L. Hobbs, Lillie Kate Hobbs, Wanda D. McCaulley, Angela M. Rowell, Maurice Hobbs, Vanessa Rowell, Calvin T. Rowell, Michael J. McCaulley, Madalynn McCaulley and a host of other extended family and friends. Lillie, I have always loved and needed the special touches of our relationship; without you this walk would not have been completed—I have not left you.
When the European emerged in the world in the 15th and 16th centuries, for the second time, they not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world, and they also colonized images, including the image of God, thereby putting us into a trap, for we are the only people who worship a God whose image we did not choose! I had to respond to this behavior. I could not live with this nonsense and contradiction and I challenged these insidious concepts and theories. While I have not finished my work and I remain worried about who will replace Dr. Ben and me, I am not displeased of my progress of 83 years. As we all would agree, the struggle is continuous. I have utilized several avenues: I wrote songs and while most of you are familiar with the Boy Who Painted Christ Black, I wrote some two hundred short stories. I question the political judgment of those who would have the nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly hair. My publications in the form of edited books, major essays, and book introductions are indeed important documents and number more than thirty, Africa, Lost and Found with Richard Moore and Keith Baird, and African People at the Crossroads are among the major publication used in History and African American Studies disciplines on college and university campuses. I am also honored to have edited books on Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. Through the United Nations, I published monographs on Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois; and, to clarify the historical record, I was compelled to publish a monograph on Christopher Columbus and the African Holocaust. One of my latest works, Who Betrayed the African Revolution?, was a very painful project, indeed. And, when I think of William Styron's error with Nat Turner and our response to it, I feel convinced that Nat was able to return to his rest in peace. Among the paths of my journey, I have had a chance to engage in dialogue at the major centers of higher education throughout North and South America, Africa and Europe. I am humbled by these opportunities and, I have been blessed as the recipient of a number of honorary degrees. My professorships at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University (where my portrait hangs at the artistic genius of Don Miller) was very important for the young men and women I taught there, and the work that I did with African and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College between 1965 and 1985 was highly significant. I have walked majestically with kings and queens and presidents and other heads of states. My special destiny with Africa, early on in this walk, afforded me the opportunity to mentor Kwame Nkrumah when he arrived in the United States as a student. The reciprocity of our relationship was manifested in my sojourn to post independence Ghana as a young journalist. Without question, my walk has been sweeter because I have shared the path with Kwame Nkrumah, Betty Shabazz and Malcolm, C.Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmy Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Wright, Julian Mayfield, John G. (Glover) Jackson, Cheikh Anta Diop, John O. Killens, Hoyt Fuller, Chancellor Williams, Drusilla Dundee Houston. Well, what do you know, I am transitioning with all of these giants now and the process is much easier because all of you are here with me. This walk has been anointed by God and the list of walkers is endless, and all of you have touched me deeply. I humbly acknowledge Dorothy Calder, Diane James, Doris Lee, Adalaide Sanford, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Barbara Adams, Judy Miller, Gil Noble, James Turner, Howard Dodson, Mari Evans, Haki Madhubuti, Selma White, William and Camille Cosby, Irving Burgess, Pat Williams and others too numerous to mention. As all of you must know, I made an early commitment to transfer my library to Black institutions in an effort to demonstrate my unlimited trust and respect to the black community. So, it is to the Atlanta University Center and to the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture where I have donated the majority of my books and documents. I entrusted this task to members of the Institute for African Research, the Foundation which will perpetuate those objectives for which I dedicated my life. This has really been a long marathon and there have been caregivers at my dehydration stations that kept vigil and in the spirit of love and devotion, I thank you for your deeds. Ann Swanson and Barbara True, your work with me has been unconditional and I ask you now to accept my gratitude and know that my spirit will always be your protective shield. Chiri Fitzpatrick and Derrick Grubb, you are very familiar with the parameters of this run and with me; you are of long-distance caliber. Jim Dyer,Andy Thompson, Lez Edmond, and Debbie Swire, I thank you for walking in step with me and bracing me with your strength. In you I observed the ingredients of African kings and queens. Iva Elaine Carruthers and Bettye Parker Smith, I know that I have raised you the right way and you must now move with winds of my spirit wings. You know my literary agenda and you are obligated to manage that knowledge. The ancestors have stretched out their arms and I see them beckoning now at a distance. And, like Langston Hughes has known rivers, I have known love and bliss. Sybil Williams Clarke, whom I have known for over fifty years and now my wife of ten months and my companion and friend eleven years, has made this journey with me and made my life complete. But, Sybil, your loving touch, notwithstanding, your arms were not long enough to box with the eminent moment. But, while I must make this physical departure, spiritually, I will not leave you and God will take care of you. When you feel a cool breeze blow across you face every now and then, just know that it comes from the deep reservoir of love that I hold for you. Oh, by the way, Christ is Black; I see him walking at a distance with Nkrumah: I think they are coming over to greet me."
[edit] References
- "John Henrik Clarke His People’s Historian".
- John Henrik Clarke Resources (Runoko Rashidi)
- [1](In His Own Words)
- [2](Harlem History Club)
[edit] External links
- Watch Video: John Henrik Clarke Lecture on The African Mind
- The John Henrik Clarke Virtual Museum
- In Memory of John Henrik Clarke (Hunter College)
- Schomburg Legacy Exhibition: John Henrik Clarke Section
- John Henrik Clarke Bibliographies (Cornell University)
- John Henrik Clarke Resources (Runoko Rashidi)
- Information on Film, John Henrik Clarke: A Great & Mighty Walk
