Dr. John Henrik Clarke (born John Henry Clark, January 1, 1915 – July 12, 1998), was a Pan-Africanist writer, historian, professor, and a pioneer in the creation of Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s.
He was born John Henry Clark on January 1, 1915, in Union Springs, Alabama,["Dr. John Henrik Clarke", Race and History] the youngest child of sharecroppers John (Doctor) and Willie Ella (Mays) Clark (who died in 1922).[i, w. gabriel selassie, "Clarke, John Henrik (1915-1998)", BlackPast.org.] With the hopes of earning enough money to buy land rather than sharecrop, his family moved to the closest milltown, Columbus, Georgia.
Counter to his mother's wishes for him to become a farmer, Clarke left Georgia in 1933 by freight train and went to Harlem, New York as part of the Great Migration of rural blacks out of the South to northern cities. There he pursued scholarship and activism. He renamed himself as John Henrik (after rebel Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen) and added an "e" to his surname, spelling it as "Clarke."[Adams, Barbara E. John Henrik Clarke: Master Teacher. New York: A&B Publishers Group. ISBN 978-1-61759-012-2]
Positions in academia
Clarke was a professor of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York from 1969 to 1986, where he served as founding chairman of the department. He also was the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center.[Eric Kofi Acree, "John Henrik Clarke: Historian, Scholar, and Teacher", Cornell University Library.] Additionally, in 1968 he founded the African Heritage Studies Association and the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association.
In its obituary of Clarke, The New York Times noted that the activist's ascension to professor emeritus at Hunter College was "unusual... without benefit of a high school diploma, let alone a Ph.D." It acknowledged that "nobody said Professor Clarke wasn't an academic original."[Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2009.] In 1994, Clarke earned a doctorate from the non-accredited Pacific Western University (now California Miramar University) in Los Angeles, having earned a bachelor's degree there in 1992.[Andy Wallace, "John H. Clarke, 83, Leading African American Historian", Philly.com (The Inquirer), July 18, 1998.]
Career
By the 1920s, the Great Migration and demographic changes had led to a concentration of African Americans living in Harlem. A synergy developed among the artists, writers and musicians and many figured in the Harlem Renaissance. They began to develop supporting structures of study groups and informal workshops to develop newcomers and young people.
Arriving in Harlem at the age of 18 in 1933,[Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2009.] Clarke developed as a writer and lecturer during the Great Depression years. He joined study circles such as the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers' Workshop. He studied intermittently at New York University, Columbia University, Hunter College, the New School of Social Research and the League for Professional Writers.[Andy Wallace, "John H. Clarke, 83, Leading African American Historian", Philly.com (The Inquirer), July 18, 1998.]["John Henrik Clarke", Legacy Exhibit online, New Jersey Public Library - Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture; accessed January 20, 2009.] He was an autodidact whose mentors included the scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.[8] From 1941 to 1945, Clarke served as a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army Air Forces, ultimately attaining the rank of master sergeant.[Andy Wallace, "John H. Clarke, 83, Leading African American Historian", Philly.com (The Inquirer), July 18, 1998.]
In the post-World War II era, there was new artistic development, with small presses and magazines being founded and surviving for brief times. Writers and publishers continued to start new enterprises: Clarke was co-founder of the Harlem Quarterly (1949–51), book review editor of the Negro History Bulletin (1948–52), associate editor of the magazine, Freedomways, and a feature writer for the black-owned Pittsburgh Courier.["John Henrik Clarke", Legacy Exhibit online, New Jersey Public Library - Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture; accessed January 20, 2009.]
Clarke taught at the New School for Social Research from 1956 to 1958.[Golus, Carrie, "Clarke, John Henrik 1915–1998", Contemporary Black Biography. 1999. Encyclopedia.com.] Traveling in West Africa in 1958–59, he met Kwame Nkrumah, whom he had mentored as a student in the US,["Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Hunter College, CUNY", Sankofa World Publishers.] and was offered a job working as a journalist for the Ghana Evening News. He also lectured at the University of Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, including in Nigeria at the University of Ibadan.["Clarke, John Henrik(1915–1998) - Historian, writer, educator, Harlem: An Unconventional Education", Encyclopedia.jrank.org.]
Becoming prominent during the Black Power movement in the 1960s, which began to advocate a kind of black nationalism, Clarke advocated for studies of the African-American experience and the place of Africans in world history. He challenged the views of academic historians and helped shift the way African history was studied and taught. Clarke was "a scholar devoted to redressing what he saw as a systematic and racist suppression and distortion of African history by traditional scholars."[Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2009.] He accused his detractors of having Eurocentric (focusing on European culture or history to the exclusion of a wider view of the world; implicitly regarding European culture as preeminent.)views. His writing included six scholarly books and many scholarly articles. He also edited anthologies of writing by African Americans, as well as collections of his own short stories. In addition, Clarke published general interest articles.[Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2009.] In one especially heated controversy, he edited and contributed to an anthology of essays by African Americans attacking the white writer William Styron and his novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, for his fictional portrayal of the African-American slave known for leading a rebellion in Virginia.
Besides teaching at Hunter College and Cornell University, Clarke founded professional associations to support the study of black culture. He was a founder with Leonard Jeffries and first president of the African Heritage Studies Association, which supported scholars in areas of history, culture, literature and the arts. He was a founding member of other organizations to support work in black culture: the Black Academy of Arts and Letters and the African-American Scholars' Council.["John Henrik Clarke", Legacy Exhibit online, New Jersey Public Library - Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture; accessed January 20, 2009.]
Personal life
Clarke's first marriage was to the mother of his daughter Lillie (who died before her father).["Clarke, John Henrik(1915–1998) - Historian, writer, educator, Harlem: An Unconventional Education", Encyclopedia.jrank.org.] They divorced.
In 1961, Clarke married Eugenia Evans in New York, and together they had a son and daughter: Nzingha Marie and Sonni Kojo.["Clarke, John Henrik(1915–1998) - Historian, writer, educator, Harlem: An Unconventional Education", Encyclopedia.jrank.org.] The marriage ended in divorce.
In 1997, John Henrik Clarke married his longtime companion, Sybil Williams.[Christopher Williams, "Clarke, John Henrik", in Henry Louis Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds), Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 118.][Rochell Isaac, "Clarke, John Henrik", in Encyclopedia of African American History: Volume 1, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 424.] He died of a heart attack on July 12, 1998, at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center.[Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2009.] He was buried in Green Acres Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia.["Historical People", Green Acres Cemetery.]
Legacy and honors
1985 – Faculty of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University named the John Henrik Clarke Library after him.[15]
1995 – Carter G. Woodson Medallion, Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.
2002 – Molefi Kete Asante listed Dr. John Henrik Clarke as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.[16]
2011 – Immortal Technique includes a short speech by Dr. Clarke on his album The Martyr. It is Track 13, which is entitled "The Conquerors".
Selected bibliography
Editor and contributor, William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968) (other contributors are Lerone Bennett Jr., Alvin F. Poussaint, Vincent Harding, John Oliver Killens, John A. Williams, Ernest Kaiser, Loyle Hairston, Charles V. Hamilton, and Mike Thelwell.)
Editor and contributor, with the assistance of Amy Jacques Garvey, Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa (1974)
The Boy Who Painted Jesus Black (1975)
Editor, Malcolm X: Man and His Times (1991), an anthology of the activist's writings
African World Revolution:Africans At The Crossroads (1991)
Author and editor, Who Betrayed the African World Revolution?: And Other Speeches (1993)
African People in World History (1993) (first of Black Classic Press's Contemporary Lecture Series)
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism (reprinted 2011)
My Life in Search of Africa. Third World Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-88378-178-4.
Anna Swanston (2003). Dr. John Henrik Clarke: his life, his words, his works. IAM Unlimited Pub. ISBN 978-1-929526-06-2.
Cheikh Anta Diop And the New Light on African History (1974) ISBN 978-1943138159
Quotes of Dr. John Henrik Clarke
It is too often forgotten that when the Europeans gained enough maritime skills and gunpowder to conquer most of the world, they not only colonized the bulk of the world's people but they colonized the interpretation of history itself. Human history was rewritten to favor them at the expense of other people. The roots of modern racism can be traced to this conquest and colonization.
To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.
My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, then in your imagination God suppose to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.
We have been educated into believing someone else's concept of the deity, and someone else's standard of beauty. You have the right to practice any religion and politics in a way that best suits your freedom, your dignity, and your understanding. And once you do that, you don't apologize.
Our concept of beauty is taken from Hollywood, which is anti-black. We don't see ourselves as beautiful in most cases. Although we are naturally one of the most beautiful peoples out there, we don't see it. We don't get the point. Hollywood sets the standards.
Africa and its people are the most written about and the least understood of all of the world's people. This condition started in the 15th and the 16th centuries with the beginning of the slave trade system. The Europeans not only colonized most of the world, they began to colonize information about the world and its people.
To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.
It's time for Black people to stop playing the separating game of geography, of where the slave ship put us down. We must concentrate on where the slave ship picked us up.
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