We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About 100 Amazing Facts About The Negro
Product Description The first edition of Joel Augustus Rogers’s now legendary 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, published in 1934, was billed as “A Negro ‘Believe It or Not.’” Rogers’s little book was priceless because he was delivering enlightenment and pride, steeped in historical research, to a people too long starved on the lie that they were worth nothing. For African Americans of the Jim Crow era, Rogers’s was their first black history teacher. But Rogers was not always shy about embellishing the “facts” and minimizing ambiguity; neither was he above shock journalism now and then. With élan and erudition—and with winning enthusiasm—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Roger’s work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African-American history in question-and-answer format. Among the one hundred questions: Who were Africa’s first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history’s wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry? Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there? Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history? Where was the first Underground Railroad? Who was the first black American woman to be a self-made millionaire? Which black man made many of our favorite household products better? Here is a surprising, inspiring, sometimes boldly mischievous—all the while highly instructive and entertaining—compendium of historical curiosities intended to illuminate the sheer complexity and diversity of being “Negro” in the world. (With full-color illustrations throughout.) Review One of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 in History Fall 2017 "Brilliant...The book brims with conversation pieces but also with the pain that is all too evident when discussing the ways enslaved people of African descent lived here in the United States and around the world.... It overflows with interesting information and provides much food for thought." —The Washington Post "Reading 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro is like taking a tour of black history with a very erudite and accessible guide...Gates’s embrace of a retro book title and structure is particularly interesting in our contemporary moment. He offers an unorthodox approach to learning about African-American history in the era of Black Lives Matter and the Trump presidency... 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro offers seeds that may grow among readers into a deeper appreciation of African-American history, one that may render another homage to Rogers unnecessary." —Boston Globe "Part Encyclopedia Africana, part advanced black studies course, the book unearths little known, often surprising truths about the complex history of the worldwide black diaspora, serving up a sweeping concept in bite-sized chapters... It’s also serendipitous: “100 Amazing Facts” comes as the nation grapples — again — with the scourge of white nationalism, a misguided yet persistent philosophy based on the belief that white men built Western civilization by themselves. In this context, the professor’s meticulously researched book, written in his signature avuncular style, is something of a history smackdown." —Minneapolis Star Tribune “A collection of vignettes about the black experience in the United States and around the globe. In 1957, respected Pittsburgh Courier journalist Joel A. Rogers published a book, 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, based on research he had conducted for his columns . . . Gates, the prolific scholar and popularizer of black history, presents this book as an homage and update to the work of "Mr. Rogers." . . . The pieces range widely in chronology, theme, and geography, and his facts about the "Negro" (the anachronism is intentional, part of the tribute to Rogers) most heavily
