David Walker (1785-1830)
David Walker was prominent, standing out to be seen easily, among a generation of
politically outspoken free blacks that included Frederick Douglass, Martin Robinson Delany, and
the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet. His longest lasting achievement was his essay, Walker’s
Appeal...to the Colored Citizens of the World, which in part called on African American slaves to
revolt against their masters to gain their freedom.
Walker’s mother was white while his father was an enslaved Afrikan, but he was born
free taking the status of his mother as stipulated, to specify something, by North Carolina law. It
is unknown how Walker learned to read and write. The south made a scant, limited, provision for
educating Afrikans, whether slave or free. Walker created a used clothes business and quickly
gained recognition in the local black community. He was a natural leader and physically
impressive. Walker played an active role in the Massachusetts General Colored Association,
established in 1826, and was an agent for the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s
Journal.
In 1828, Walker exhorted free blacks to improve their lot through mutual aid and selfhelp organizations. In September of the following year Walker published his Appeal, which
further extended his argument for Black activism and solidarity. Besides advocating the violent
overthrow of slavery and the formation of Black Civil Rights and self-help organizations, the
Appeal called for racial equality in the United States and Independence for the peoples of Afrika.
Alarmed southern leaders created stricter laws against Walker’s literature and teaching free
Afrikans to read or write.
The Georgia State legislature went as far as placing on Walker’s head, $10,000 if he was
captured alive, or $1,000 if dead. In 1830, nine months after publishing his Appeal, Walker died
under mysterious circumstances. Rumor held that he had been poisoned, but there was never any
evidence.
1. Prominent means:
a. standing out to be seen easily
b. strong
c. consistent
d. outgoing
2. Walker had?
a. A white mother
b. Security guards
c. A enslaved father
d. a and c only
3. The Massachusetts General Colored Association was?
a. established in 1826
b. owned by whites
c. Walker’s only dream
d. established in 1828
4. Scant means:
a. Too much
b. Limited
c. A thief
d. A written paper
5. Walker was a born an enslaved Afrikan.
a. True
b. False
Gordon Parks Sr. (1912-2006)
He was the youngest of 15 children of a dirt farmer. At the age of 16, Parks left shortly
after his mother’s death. While working as a waiter on the Northern Pacific Railroad, Parks
showed interest in magazine photos produced by the Farm Security Administration. He later
watched the World War II newsreel, which sparked his interest to become a photographer. Parks
quickly showed he was a natural for his subjects, even if he lacked training at the time to catch
them flawlessly. Being a great photographer, his work was eventually discovered by Marva
Louis, the wife of Joe Louis. She worked with Parks to set up a bigger market in Chicago.
When Parks had spare time, he would turn his camera away from fashion to the destitute,
lacking of needs, streets of the south side of Chicago. Parks’ picture exhibit at the South Side
Community Art Center won Parker a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1941 and an opportunity to
work at the Farm Security Administration. There, he took on the assignment of showing the
“Face of America.”
Parks revealed a skill showing he could express himself more powerfully with the camera
then with words. In 1948, Parks was hired by Life magazine. Parks’ work in the 1950s and early
1960s, was highly acclaimed, praise enthusiastically and publicly. In a series on the slums of Rio
de Janeiro, Parks won international recognition as a photo journalist. Parks’ most noteworthy
photographs were his chronicles of the political activities of African Americans, the Civil Rights
Movement, the Black Power Movement, and the growth of the Nation of Islam.
Parks did not stop there, he begun to write more. In 1963, he published The Learning
Tree, the saga of a farm family in the 1920s, much like Parks’ own. Parks combined his literacy
and visual talents in a 1969 movie version of The Learning Tree, becoming the first African
American director of a major Hollywood movie. His hit movie Shaft was released in 1971,
followed by Leadbelly (1976) and The Odyssey of Solomon Northop (1984), the story of a free
Black sold into slavery.
Parks received the Springarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) in 1972, and the National Medal for the Arts in 1986. He will be
remembered for his multitasking skills.
1. Destitute means:
a. taking pictures
b. lacking of needs
c. to choose wisely
d. creating pictures
2. Gordon Parks was?
a. the youngest of his 15 children
b. fought in World War II
c. worked on cars
d. received a BET award
3. Gordon Parks created?
a. Learning Tree
b. Shaft
c. The Black Panther
d. a and b only
4. Acclaimed means:
a. to take in
b. speak quietly
c. praise publicly
d. to eat slowly
5. In 1948, Parks was hired by?
a. The Learning Tree
b. Life magazine
c. Photography music line
d. a and b only
Queen Nanny (C.1685-unknown circa 1755)
The woman who became one of Jamaica’s founding “fathers,” Queen Nanny, was sitting
next to a large black pot on a hot summer’s night in Ghana. Queen Nanny called upon the
powers of the obeah, or folk magic. Without any source of heat or fire the pot began to boil. The
ancestors replied. Queen Nanny was presumed to have been born around the 1680s in Africa’s
Gold Coast (now known as Ghana). She was assumed to belong to either the Ashanti or Akan
ethnic group and came to Jamaica as a free woman, but others say as an enslaved Afrikan. Much
of what is known about Nanny comes from oral history as little textual evidence exists.
Maroons, Afrikan refugees that escaped slavery and formed independent settlements,
were considered skilled fighters and hard to defeat. Being under Spanish rule up to the 1650s,
enslaved Afrikans escaped and intermarried with native islanders, Arawaks in their communities.
Even more enslaved Afrikans were able to escape from their plantations to join the two main
groups of Maroons in Jamaica called Windward and Leeward. These Maroons mainly consisted
of people from the Akan region of West Africa. For more than 150 years the Maroons helped to
free enslaved Afrikans from the plantations while damaging land and property belonging to
plantation owners.
As a child Nanny was influenced by other leaders and Maroons. Nanny and her close
friends, Accompong Cudjoe, and Quao ran away from their plantation and hid in the Blue
Mountains area. While in hiding, they split up to organize more Maroon communities across
Jamaica. Nanny and Quao founded communities in Portland Parish, where she organized a
village called Nanny Town. She married a Maroon named Adou. There were stories of British
attacks on Nanny Town, but thanks to the strategic location and the idea of having only one
entrance/exit to town, they were able to fight off all but one British soldier, though they were
heavily outnumbered.
Maroons at Nanny Town and similar communities survived by trading to nearby market
towns to exchange food for weapons and cloth. The community raised animals, hunted, grew
crops, and was well organized. The Maroons were also known for raiding plantations for
weapons and food, burning the plantation, and leading enslaved Afrikans back to their
communities. Nanny was very adept at organizing plans to free captive Afrikans. Within 30
years, Nanny freed more than 800 enslaved Afrikans, and helped them to resettle in the Maroon
community. Queen Nanny is known as one of the earliest leaders of resistance in the Americas,
and one of few women. She is celebrated in Jamaica and abroad.
1. Obeah means:
a. to listen
b. to place outside
c. to be forced to leave
d. folk magic
2. Nanny ran away with who?
a. Cudjoe
b. Olodumare
c. Quao
d. a and c only
3. Queen Nanny was assumed to belong to?
a. Ashanti
b. Akan
c. a and b only
d. none of the above
4. Maroon are:
a. a brownish-crimson color
b. Afrikan refugees
c. slaves
d. police officers
5. Queen Nancy freed only 500 slaves.
a. True
b. False
John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998)
Born on January 1, 1915, as the youngest child of John and Willie Ella Clarke, Clarke
never formally attended high school, but attended Spencer High School due to overcrowding in
middle schools. Clarke’s mother had great wishes for Clarke to be a farmer, but Clarke left
Georgia in 1933 by freight train and went to Harlem, New York. While there, he pursued
scholarship and activism. Clarke developed skills as a writer during the Great Depression years.
He was an autodidact, self-taught, whose mentors included the scholar Arturo Alfonso
Schomburg. At the age of 78, Clarke obtained a doctorate from Pacific Western University in
Los Angeles.
Prominent, famous or important, during the Black Power movement, Clarke advocated
for Studies on the African-American experience and the place of Africans in World History. He
challenged academic historians and helped shift the way African history was studied. Clarke
accused his detractors of having Eurocentric views.
Clarke was active in creating professional associations to support the study of Black
culture. He was a founder and first president of the African Heritage Studies Association with
Leonard Jeffries, which supported scholars in areas of history, culture, literature and the arts. He
also became professor of Africana and Puerto Rican Studies at New York’s Hunter College and
president of Sankofa University, an online Internet school. Clarke died at the age of 83 due to a
heart attack.
1. Clarke’s mother wanted?
a. A corn field
b. To attend high school
c. For Clarke to be a farmer
d. John Clarke to be happy
2. Autodidact means:
a. To know sign language
b. To be self-taught
c. Born with discipline
d. To start up about
3. Clarke challenged:
a. Academic historians
b. His mother
c. Leonard Jeffries
d. Hunter College
4. Prominent means:
a. poor
b. self-sufficient
c. famous
d. stable
5. Clarke died?
a. at the age of 83
b. due to a heart attack
c. a and b only
d. next to Leonard Jeffries