World’s Great Men of Colour
by J.A. Rogers
Published by Simon and Schuster
ISBN 10 0684815818

MANY of the inventions and discoveries claimed by whites are shown by historical data to have been invented or pioneered by blacks.
There have been deliberate acts over the years to erase the stories and achievements of blacks.
Blacks have been shown to be at the mercy of white people.
It is the whites who saved blacks from a life of drudgery and misery, literally saving them from themselves, so goes the white narrative.
The book under review this week, World’s Great Men of Colour by J.A. Rogers, looks at the lives of great black people from ancient times up to the modern day who have made great contributions to improving and making better the lives of many people across the world.
Rogers spent half a century researching great black personalities.
Characters like Aesop of the famous fables, under Abu Hassan Ali, known as the ‘The Black Sultan’ of Moroccan art, architecture and literature rose to its zenith, Imhotep is described as the ‘god of Medicine’, ‘Prince of Peace’ and the ‘First Christ’ who are all blacks feature in the book.
“…Africa was lost from the respectful commentary of history. Until quite recently it was rather generally assumed, even among well-eductaed persons …that the continent of Africa was a great expanse of land, mostly jungle, inhabited by savages and fierce beasts.”
And World’s Great Men of Colour sets the record straight.
The book is an eye opener with details of black scientists, educators, inventors, politicians, authors, among others who have surpassed the realm of the ‘normal’ and have made historical marks on society.
The book is not a feel good publication but gives biographical accounts of each individual, providing relevant dates, events and achievements of these notable achievers that have been suppressed and made to disappear.
This is one great work on black history that will appeal to students, universities and anyone interested in the history of black people in the world.
Indeed, the book is a comprehensive guide to the most noteworthy black personalities in world history and their significance produced by an author who spent the best part of his life in exhaustive research on the major names in black history whose contributions or even very existence have been glossed over.
This informative book helps restore pride and self-belief of a people who have, for hundreds of years, been made to feel insignificant.
Our greatest tragedy is the tendency by Africans to see nothing good in their history.
The story of Africans is one full of ‘darkness’ and pain with the images of horror being churned out even in the 21st Century. Black stories are said to be the kind that is not inspiring.
At every turn, white characters crop up to ‘save’ suffering Africans.
Even when graduating with PhDs, African children do not even know that they are black scientists and mathematicians who pioneered a lot of what they are studying today.
“J.A. Rogers’s anthropological and historical research and careful documentation sought to rescue his people from the humiliations of white scholarly mythology. Rogers’ classic World’s Great Men of Colour has added vital pages to what has become known as Black Studies,” comments fellow author William Loren Katz.
The book grants access to an important black past.
On explaining why he authored the book, the writer says; “…in my early childhood it was firmly impressed on me by the ruling classes that black people were inherently inferior and that their sole reason for being was to be servants to white people…The blacks, I was told, had never accomplished anything in all of history…and that such civilisations they now showed were due to the benevolence of Christian whites who had dragged them from cannibalism.”
The book reclaims blacks stolen by whites and turned white.
“I saw, also, that the white overlords to inflate the ego of their own group had reached back to claim the coal-black Ethiopian, the mulatto Egyptian, the black Hindu, the Negroid Polynesian, not to mention certain individuals of black ancestry such as Aesop, Terence, Cleopatra and Mohammed, as white,” states the author.
The book serves as a cure to the inferiority complex which some blacks suffer from.
“It is undeniable that a knowledge of one’s ancestors does have a certain psychological value, especially if such ancestors were worthy. Especially for youths would this be an inspiration,” says the author.
Did you know that Aesop who has had profound influence on Western thought and morals, chiefly through his fables, inspiring people like Plato, Socrates, Cicero and William Shakespeare was black?
“He was a native of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, and a Negro slave, ‘flat-nosed…with lips, thick and pendulous and a black skin from which he contracted his name Esop being the same with Ethiop.”
The book does a lot to inspire black people.
“In conclusion, let me say that my intention was not to write highly critical and psychoanalytical or even literary essays but rather principally success stories, chiefly for black youths. I hope white youth will find some inspiration in them too,” says Rogers.