Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising

Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising is an anthology of 177 short biographies of African American men written by William J. Simmons and published in 1887. The book has been called the "single most authoritative work on nineteenth-century African Americans".[1]

Background

In 1887, Simmons was a Baptist minister living in Louisville, Kentucky where he was president of the State University of Kentucky, later called Simmons College. He was a leading figure in African-American Society and knew many of the subjects of the book personally.[2]

Description

Based on primary source material such as "speeches, sermons, and articles,"[1] the book includes biographies of many recognizable figures such as Frederick Douglass, Crispus Attucks, Henry Highland Garnet, and Alexander Crummell, as well as lesser known individuals. The biographies include attorneys, carpenters, pastors, merchants, phrenologists, artists, and scholars.[3] Most of the personalities had slave parents or were themselves slaves.[1]

The book illustrates the connection between Simmons and black-nationalism, such as that espoused by influential African Methodist Episcopal leader Henry McNeal Turner, who wrote an introduction and biographical sketch on Simmons for the collection,[4][5] and gave Simmons lasting fame. Simmons planned a sequel about African-American women, but his sudden death in 1890 prevented his continuing the project.[6]

The book has been called the "single most authoritative work on nineteenth-century African Americans".[1] The selection of individuals shows the leading role religious figures played in African-American life and identity of the time. Seventy-one of the 177 biographies are Christian ministers, approximately three times as many ministers as members of any other profession.[7] Simmons writes in the preface that the text is meant to show how people develop themselves, and could be used for students.[3]

The biographies are not considered completely without bias, and are called by Baptist scholar William H. Brackney "hagiographic".[8] The book was reprinted in 1968 by Arno Press.[1]

Numerous other biographical anthologies covering African Americans were published around this time. Two separate volumes about African American Women, Noted Negro Women by Monroe Alpheus Majors and Women of Distinction by Lawson A. Scruggs, were published in 1893 and represented entries into the genre which did focus on women.[9]

Table of contents

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Glover, Denise Marie (1995). Voices of the Spirit: Sources for Interpreting the African American Experience. American Library Association. p. 44. ISBN 0838906397.
  2. Dorrien, Gary. The New Abolition: WEB Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel. Yale University Press, 2015. p396-401
  3. 1 2 Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F.; Lofton, Kathryn (2010). Women's Work: An anthology of African-American women's historical writings from antebellum America to the Harlem Renaissance. Oxford University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0199779716.
  4. Sarna, Jonathan D., ed. (1998). Minority faiths and the American Protestant mainstream. University of Illinois Press. p. 161. ISBN 0252066472.
  5. Low, W. Augustus; Clift, Virgil A., eds. (1981). Encyclopedia of Black America. McGraw-Hill. p. 440. ISBN 0070388342.
  6. Appiah, Anthony; Gates Jr, Henry Louis, eds. (2005). Africana: The encyclopedia of the African and African American experience. Oxford University Press. p. 761. ISBN 0195170555.
  7. Andrews, William L. (1994), "The Politics of African-American Ministerial Autobiography from Reconstruction to the 1920s", in Johnson, Paul E, African-American Christianity: Essays in History, University of California Press, p. 115, ISBN 0520075943
  8. Brackney, William H. (2005), "African American Baptists: Prolegomenon to a theological tradition", in Roberts, James Deotis; Battle, Michael, The Quest for Liberation and Reconciliation: Essays in honor of J. Deotis Roberts, Westminster John Knox Press, p. 167, ISBN 0664228925
  9. Des Jardins, Julie (2003). Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, race, and the politics of memory, 1880–1945. UNC Press Books. pp. 127–128. ISBN 0807854751.
  10. Simmons, William J., and Henry McNeal Turner. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. GM Rewell & Company, 1887.
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