The 100 people who are included range from former slaves such as Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley to more contemporary individuals such as Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison. Among others are sports figures Jesse Owens and Tiger Woods, performers Marian Anderson and Bill Cosby, and political activists Marcus Garvey and Jesse Jackson. Each portrait covers two to four pages that summarize the person's life, work, and importance and is accompanied by a black-and-white photograph or illustration. There is enough variety so that students with assignments will have no trouble focusing on someone in their area of interest.
100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia
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Asante, professor in the African American Studies program at Temple University, has written a volume in which he attempts to distill his work on the history of African Americans into a list of the 100 greatest people in that history--a difficult task to be sure, and one that can lead to arguments over the choices. Whether one feels Barbara Jordan would make a better choice than Shirley Chisholm, or that Matthew Gaines was a stronger educator than John Russwurm, it is hard to disagree with the people who Asante chose to highlight. He explains his choices in the introduction and makes it very clear that he left out numerous current popular people because he feels the hype around the pop persona is not what makes an individual important. He makes no attempt to rank the people he selected because he viewed that as an impossible task, so arrangement is alphabetical. A short bibliography lists material for further research.
The 100 people who are included range from former slaves such as Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley to more contemporary individuals such as Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison. Among others are sports figures Jesse Owens and Tiger Woods, performers Marian Anderson and Bill Cosby, and political activists Marcus Garvey and Jesse Jackson. Each portrait covers two to four pages that summarize the person's life, work, and importance and is accompanied by a black-and-white photograph or illustration. There is enough variety so that students with assignments will have no trouble focusing on someone in their area of interest.
Most of the 100 are covered in other reference sources, but this volume offers a reasonably priced, easy-to-digest collection of articles. Recommended for school and public library collections. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"...serves as a reference for scholars and an inspiration to the general reader." -- Reference and Research Book News, February, 2003
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, Wonderful book.,
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This review is from: 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Hardcover)
Absolutely phenomenal. Molefi Asante does a brilliant job in describing and praising the lives of each of the people that he profiles in this book. In order to not love his work in this book, you would have to be coming from a place of foolishness and hatred to begin with. As the previous reviewer obviously was.
2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly written. Rendered interesting stories boring. Find a better book about great African Americans,
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This review is from: 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Hardcover)
This book is one of the worst writings I have ever read. The author begins each bio with bad prose, extolling the virtue and greatness of the person to be described. It's actually an insult to the 100 African Americans listed, as though their acts were not really great enough to stand on their own by simply describing what they accomplished. Rather, the author must first wax poetic (badly) about how wonderful they were before even telling you what they accomplished. Was there not enough that could be said about their deeds to fill a book without pages of useless filler?If anyone knows of a really good book of mini biographies of great Black Americans I would appreciate your telling me about it. Because I'd love to read their stories. Unfortunately, I could not read about those accomplishments in this book. It made me gag.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
When Carter G. Woodson and Charles Wesley wrote their famous book The Negro in Our History in the 1940s, it was easy to think of the African's presence in the United States as merely an insertion into the European story in America. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African American, United States, New York, Howard University, Frederick Douglass, Civil War, Harlem Renaissance, Supreme Court, Prince Hall, North Carolina, Langston Hughes, Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, Los Angeles, Richard Wright, Rosa Parks, Countee Cullen, Nation of Islam, New Jersey, Richard Allen, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Weldon Johnson, John Hope Franklin, South Carolina, Thurgood Marshall New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
When Carter G. Woodson and Charles Wesley wrote their famous book The Negro in Our History in the 1940s, it was easy to think of the African's presence in the United States as merely an insertion into the European story in America. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African American, United States, New York, Howard University, Frederick Douglass, Civil War, Harlem Renaissance, Supreme Court, Prince Hall, North Carolina, Langston Hughes, Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, Los Angeles, Richard Wright, Rosa Parks, Countee Cullen, Nation of Islam, New Jersey, Richard Allen, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Weldon Johnson, John Hope Franklin, South Carolina, Thurgood Marshall New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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- Frederick Douglass by Booker T. Washington on 9 pages
- Native Son by Richard A. Wright on 4 pages
- The New Negro : Voices of the Harlem Renaissance by Alain Locke on 4 pages
- Black Folk: Then and Now; An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race. by William Edward Burghardt, Du Bois on page 96, page 115, and page 116
- The Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson on page 329, and Back Matter
See all 100 books this book cites
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