John Henrik Clarke-Master Teacher

Author Barbara Eleanor Adams wrote in the ‘Message from the Author’ of this 1992 book (revised edition 2000), “The motivation to revise and expand this book comes from the positive feedback and request for more information. I was encouraged to review the manuscript with Dr. Clarke and revisit tapes, notes and portions of interviews that could have been included in the first edition…. It was Dr. Clarke’s decision to record his developmental years. He said all he wanted to say… The purpose of this book is to offer a preview of the ‘many forces’ that shaped Dr. Clarke’s life, giving a behind the scenes look at a living legend who has devoted most of his existence to the study and teaching of African history.”She adds in the Introduction, “I met Dr. Clarke for the first time in 1970 when I enrolled in the African American History course that Hunter College offered two evenings a week in Harlem… After the first class, I took every class Dr. Clarke taught for the next five semesters… I suggested to Dr. Clarke that a book should be written about him. He agreed… Countless hours of interviews were recorded concurrently with Dr. Clarke’s busy lecture and world-wide travel schedule… I was overjoyed … when after reading the completed manuscript to Dr. Clarke, he turned to me and said that … he was pleased with what I wrote…”Clarke recalls, “although I grew up poor, I grew up with all kinds of literature around me. Then one day I went to a white lawyer for whom I worked and asked him for a book on my people in World History. He let me down easy… and was not unkind. But said, ‘I’m sorry John, you come from a people that have no history. But if you persevere… then you might make history one day.’ Then he prophesied for me the greatest thing that a white man cold prophesize for a Black person when I was growing up. He said, ‘One day you might be a great Negro like Booker T. Washington.’ It was a great compliment… [because Washington] was probably the most singular and greatest Black innovative educator in this country.” (Pg. 40-41)He continues, “I began to search for the image of my people in the Bible and because I couldn’t find my people in the Bible, I wondered who we were in history… I couldn’t understand why in the Bible… together in the illustrated Sunday School lesson, I saw no one who looked like an African… everyone was white…. So I began to search for answers.” (Pg. 41-42)He recalls that, while still a teenager, he moved away from his father and stepmother’s home, and lived in ‘Madam Rosa Lee’s house,’ which “became a house of prostitution. It wasn’t a vulgar house with people fighting or anything like that. It was a boarding house that catered to a regular clientele, where the ladies worked and boarded.” (Pg. 53-54) Later, he adds, “There was a rival house next to the one in which I was living that was owned by a Madam… [who once] said something that would inspire me to this day, in spite of the way she said it. She said, ‘There goes a N____r that someday will be someone that the rest of us… will someday feel proud of.’ It was the greatest contribution to my spirit.” (Pg. 56)He recounts that “When I arrived [in Harlem] in 1933… The community was flourishing. I partly witnessed the first Harlem riot of 1935, out of which would come the beginnings of Adam Clayton Powell’s career… The famous river-to-river picket line down 125th Street happened back then… Then we had to boycott the telephone company… I kept active in the Young Communist League on the Lower East Side… While I was a … recognized fellow traveler, I always had a difference of opinion on party cultism. I resented the fact that Karl Marx had all the answers and that nothing else was to be considered… And this was at [age] eighteen.” (Pg. 60-63)He explains, It was during this same time that I began an examination of the position of the world in relationship to what it could do for my own people… I basically believed that ultimately a sharing society would have to come into being… because capitalism is without humanity, without heart and without concern for people…. I didn’t need to read Karl Marx to think this; it just made sense. These were the formative years of my career… I became a part of the Garvey movement that was revived in Harlem.” (Pg. 66)He continues, “I became a member of the Harlem History Club… I followed these men with great devotion and read most of the books they recommended. Taking a kid, such as myself, out of the South and training hum by the great Black master teachers was an unbeatable combination… I now realize that I was learning from these masters outside of college certain things that no college would have ever given me. I have since tried to give my students the same sense of history.” (Pg. 66-68)Arthur Schomberg (“who presided over the special book collection in the public library”; pg. 67) “told me that I should really study European history because I would understand how our history was stolen… ‘If you understand the history of Europe you will understand how you got left out of history, who left you out and why you got left out in the first place.’ … I did exactly at he instructed and began to thoroughly study.” (Pg. 70-71) He adds, “Before I was drafted into the army, my writing career had already begun… I read enough books and attended enough lectures to give myself the equivalent of a college education.” (Pg. 75)He goes on, “By the time I was getting out of the army, although my relationship with Grace had not cooled, she had grown impatient with my inability to straighten out my life… The reason why I didn’t marry Grace is that I was involved in a relationship with a girl here in New York who I had known as a teenager, who had a child by me. I was taking care of her and the child the best I could and wanted to straighten that matter out so Grace ad I could get together. It was never successfully straightened out and I eventually married the child’s mother. Had I been an irresponsible human being and not taken care of my responsibility to my daughter’s mother, I might have pursued another course in my life.” (Pg. 84-85)He states, “between the little bit of money I was making along with the G.I. Bill, I began to write and go to New York University. My first book of poetry … was published in 1948… [I] was one of the founding members of the Harlem Writers Guild… We met at John Killen’s house… it’s there where I first met Lorraine Hansberry. Harold [Cruse] was also a member of the group… He was a sorehead who attempted to attack all the members of his old gang who got out of the mire before he did.” (Pg. 89)He recounts, “I made up my mind to go to Africa to see what it was like. My first trip for three months was in 1958. I went mainly to Ghana and while in Ghana, I went to Nigeria and Togo… I had wanted to go to Africa all of my life, and prepared for it mentally for most of my adult life… While I was in Ghana I lived in a family compound with Ga people… While visiting Africa, I could also see where Nigeria … as on the verge of independence… [I] was going to put several pieces into the book I would call ‘Africa Without Tears.’ … but no publisher was interested in anything about Africa that wasn’t … smutty, or cheap gossip…” (Pg. 91-94) He adds, “I refer to … New York as ‘My Home In Exile’ because my historical home is Africa. If I had any doubts … I had none after going to Africa and discovering Africa was my home.” (Pg. 101)He records, “I would meet Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar when I attended the second International Congress of Africanists… My twenty-year relationship with Cheikh Anta Diop was a friendship I have dearly treasured… [I] was instrumental in getting his books into the United States. We… remained friends until his death.” (Pg. 96, 98)He notes, “a literary movement called the Harlem Renaissance was developed. That tapered off in the 1930s… [when] whites began to lose their money and they stopped coming to Harlem looking for the ‘noble savage’ or the ‘exotic’ Negro. Many… college trained … Blacks … gullible whites about art inside of their soul and novels still to be published if only they had some money. These were actors… But… they contributed to our upward mobility… it was a period of the outpouring of great literature.” (Pg. 120-121)He observes, “we came out of a … different kind of structured spirituality… our emphasis was not on religion but rather on spirituality and spirituality is higher than religion. The African recognized and honored the … force of the universe which made him different from the European who tried to defy nature… So everything in life became part of the totality of his spirituality and his God-force or spiritual force.” (Pg. 125) He also asserts, “Name a religion and I will describe the murder cult and the male chauvinist aspect of that religion.” (Pg. 127)He suggests, “nearly every state in Africa is ruled by an African trained in Europe, trained to disregard his culture for an imitation of European culture that is at conflict with his own. What we must do now is go back to the formation of the villages to study and understand African culture from a holistic view. It is apparent that they built endurance civilizations that lasted for thousands of years.” (Pg. 133-134)He proposes, “Once we … stop being consumers of everything and begin to produce something with our own effort, we can make ourselves free. Do you understand that we can employ two-thirds of all the Black people on the face of the earth by furnishing goods and services to each other?... if we begin to trade with each other and … protect each other, the greatest celebration will be a celebration from dependency to true independence.” (Pg. 137)In a 1996 lecture, he said, “Why are we still overshadowing the name of Malcolm X without correcting all the mistakes we made about him? To say that Malcolm X ended his life as a integrationist is … an insult to fact. I talked to Malcolm X four days after he came back from Mecca, where he saw different people worshipping. He hadn’t changed his attitude toward integration one iota. That was my observation.” (Pg. 164)This book should be considered “must reading” for anyone even remotely interested in Dr. Clarke, and well as contemporary African-American history.

Enjoying the read, taking my time and getting references. One of the best books I've read, since I started reading about our people's origin and present state. On page 136, second paragraph, John Henrik Clarke says "...and until we study the system among the Nors and learn that it was a forerunner of the fraternity and the sorority system that existed before the Greeks." What is Dr. Clarke referring to 'Nors' ? Anyone!

Great book, easy to read and understand.

Anyone who is interested in reviewing the Life of Master Teacher; John Henrik Clarke, will not be disappointed with this book. Dr.Clarke was an example for all of us. His thirst for knowledge attributed to his successes in life, and his desire to develop a sense of pan-africanism in the world of Black people drove him to the very end. This book gives the reader a very good insight into this man's life and his love for his Black People.

Excellent book... Dr. Clarke was one of my many teachers, who I so admired, enjoyed and learned a lot from. This book is great it give incite into this wonderful "Master Teacher"... I love all his works. He is an ancestor that I am grateful to have met, be in his company and sit at his feet.:  John Henrik Clarke-Master Teacher

The book is by one of our greatest historian in The African Diaspora, written by my greatest inspiration and teacher, my mother Dr. Barbara E. Adams-Adjua “Mama Adjua” I have witnessed being in Dr. Clarke’s class as a little boy to taking a seat at his lectures. I have met and helped my mother with any of Dr. Clarke’s dealings. It was my pleasure.

Excellent book, tells the truth about our history, and the subjugation, oppression, and abuse, that we were subjected to.

Perfect