Two Popular Black Historians and Their Unpopular Works on Slavery

History that glorifies the past is vital but it shouldn’t dominate the discourse

Photo by AussieActive on Unsplash

There’s an African proverb that goes: Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter. The proverb implies history is written by the victors, but it also gives the “lion historian” a specific task — to glorify the lion. “Glorifiers of the past” are the first type of historians that emerge from the oppressed.

In 1879 Martin R. Delany published: The Origin of Races and Color. The back cover of a modern copy explains: Delany wrote in opposition to an oppressive intellectualism that used Darwin’s thesis ‘survival of the fittest’ to support demented theories of black inferiority. Delany believed knowledge of one’s past was essential and it was necessary to inspire self-improvement.

In 1893 Rev. Rufus Lewis Perry published: The Cushite, or The Descendants of Ham. Perry’s book was in response to a racist doctrine known as “The Curse of Ham”. The curse stated the descendants of Noah’s son Ham (The black race) would be enslaved by the descendants of Noah’s son Japheth (The white race). Perry wrote: During the period of American slavery, no historian could write a true record of the sons of Ham. All were against the Negro…