The Color Purple vocabulary

[1880 - 1966]

a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and historian who contributed to the history of Africa and the African diaspora. After settling in the United States in 1906, he lived in Chicago and then New York City. He became interested in the history of African Americans in this country. His research spanned the academic fields of history, sociology and anthropology. He challenged prevailing ideas about the social construction of race, demonstrated the connections between civilizations, and traced achievements of ethnic Africans, including some with mixed European ancestry. He was one of the earliest and greatest popularizers of African history in the 20th century.

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Rogers' work was concerned with "the Great Black Man" theory of history. This theory presented history, specifically black history, as a mural of achievements by prominent black people. He devoted a significant amount of his professional life to unearthing facts about people of African ancestry, intending these findings to be a refutation of contemporary racist beliefs about the inferiority of blacks. Books such as 100 Amazing Facts about the Negro, Sex and Race, and World's Great Men of Color described remarkable black people throughout the ages and cited significant achievements of black people. He provided evidence for asserting that several historical figures previously classified or assumed to be "white" (European), including Aesop, Cleopatra, and Hannibal, were "black". This was decades before research by later Afrocentric historians (overwhelmingly rejected by specialist consensus) that supported some of his work.