James L. Conyers - Black Lives: Essays in African American Biography

Black
Lives

Black
Lives

Essays in
African American Biography

Edited by James L. Conyers Jr.

First published 1999 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Black lives : essays in African American biography / James L. Conyers, Jr.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7656-0329-2 (alk. paper)ISBN 0-7656-0330-6 (pbl.: alk. paper)
1. Afro-AmericansBiography.2. Afro-AmericansBiographyHistory and criticism.
3. Afro-AmericansBiographyStudy and teaching.I. Conyers, James L.
E185.96.B53631998
920.00929073dc21985996
CIP

ISBN 13: 9780765603302 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765603296 (hbk)

This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my Auntie Bee
(Gladys B. Cox), Dr. John Henrik Clarke, and Mrs. Frances Furman.
Your ideas and wisdom will be passed on. We mourn!

Julius E. Thompson

James L. Conyers Jr.

Calvin A. McClinton

Earnest Norton Bracey

Mitchell Kachun

Gloria T. Randle

Owen G. Mordaunt

LaVerne Gyant

Ralph Anthony Russell

Ida Young

Clement London

Olga Idriss Davis

Robin Balthrope

Andrew Smallwood

Daniel Boamah-Wiafe

Maceo Crenshaw Dailey Jr.

Julius E. Thompson

Black Lives: Essays in African American Biography is an important contribution to African American history, culture, and literary studies. The fifteen scholars in this academic volume offer insights into three focal areas of the black experience: first, intellectual biographical studies, with a focus on the life and work of Maulana Karenga (1941-), Vinnette Carroll (1922-), Daniel Chappie James Jr. (19201978), and Richard Allen (17601831); second, cultural biographical studies, concentrating on the careers of Malcolm X (19251965), Harriet Jacobs (18131897), Bessie Head (19371986), Elizabeth Ross Haynes (18831953), William Levi Dawson (18991990), and Maria Stewart (18031870); third, oral history narratives and biography as a teaching tool, suggesting that profound insights into black culture and life are offered in portraits of life in Trinidad, black female slave stories, in teaching black history courses, and as paths for greater understanding of Malcolm X, of the Ghanian scholar James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey (18751927), and of Emmett Jay Scott (18731957).

Collectively, then, the essays represent a panorama view of the world black community in all of its diversity and complexity, as represented in the African, African American, and Caribbean experiences of people of African ancestry. Three centuries are covered in the studies of this bookfrom the eighteenth century with one individual, to the nineteenth century with five major topics, to the twentieth century with seven individuals

In the initial essay, James L. Conyers Jr. notes the special significance of a very different leader in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Maulana Karenga, a philosopher, teacher, and activist, whose work represents that of a significant contemporary intellectual renaissance that has influenced Black African world consciousness since the 1960s.

In the creative universe of African American arts, Calvin A. McClinton suggests that the career of Vinnette Carroll, a director of black theater, must be recognized as a major contribution to the field. Carroll helped to develop a new form of teacher, the gospel song-play, in order to capture the richness and variety of black life through music, theater, and dance. His essay also reminds readers of the limitations that gender has sought to impose on American women, that in the case of black women these limitations have been augmented by biases of race and class.

Earnest Bracey captures the legacy of General Daniel Chappie James Jr., the first African American to rise to the rank of four-star general in the United States Air Force. Braceys study on James highlights the continuing theme of black service in the U.S. armed forcesoften against the oddsin the twentieth century, through the age of segregation (18901960) and the modern Civil Rights Movement era. Perhaps General Jamess career helps contemporary readers to understand the reasons why African Americans have fought in Americas wars and been willing to serve in the military during peacetime. One answer, as expressed in the life and career of General James, is that many blacks believed that by serving in the military they were working to help make the nature of American democracy a real reality for all of the people of the nation.

Mitchell Kachuns essay on the career of Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, denotes the historical role of black ministers and the black church in African American life in this country. Bishop Allen remains a central figure in this tradition. Yet, according to Kachun, it is the responsibility of each succeeding generation to record, interpret, and understand the historical, cultural, political, and social contributions of the leaders of the past.

Five scholars in this collection offer fresh literary insights into the careers of six significant black world figures. Gloria Randles essay, Outlaw Women and Toni Morrisons Communities, is a literary analysis centering on outlaws and the conceptual framework of collective black communities. The author focuses on three characters in three of Morrisons works: Breedlove in The Bluest Eye, Sula in the novel Sula, and Sethe in Beloved. Over all, this essay makes a valuable contribution to literary biographical studies by examining deep structural and cultural aspects of African American life and history.

Owen G. Mordaunts study on Bessie Head, the South African-born writer, suggests the complexity of life in the world black community. He denotes the issue of the color factor among black peopleBessie Head was of mixed raceand the relationship of this issue to the conditions of slavery and colonialism. Mordaunts important study also indicates the nature of the writer in society, and especially the emergence of black women writers in modern times and of the Southern African women writers in particular. Finally, this study raises some interesting observations on the nature of religion in the black world and its influences on the individual and the group.