John Henrik Clarke: Historian and Educator in the Tradition of Independent Black Scholarship
Author:
Kenneth E. Glover
Degree Date:
May, 2013
Committee Chairperson:
U/N
Call Number:
Thesis DT 3.5 2013 G568
Description:
v, 177 leaves ; 29 cm.
Abstract:
This thesis chronicles John Henrik Clarke's intellectual maturation and social/political consciousness. He used fiction as the mode of writing to invoke a narrative of the intersection of freedom and oppression as the motive of history, but at first Professor Clarke sought and achieved a measure of success by using the short story form as a medium for discussing matters of race and racism in the common life of African Americans. The larger project was to converge race and ancestry as a means of constructing an African centered methodology which provides a strategy for teaching and researching African history that is uniquely relevant to the African Diaspora to counter the omission and erasure of Africans from the annals of world history. Upon his death on July 16, 1998, he was celebrated as one of the most popular and respected African American historians and educator of his generation.