Джон Генрик Кларк: Африка-Америкалық ғалым және тарихшы

African American scholar and historian

John Henrik Clarke (born John Henry Clark; January 1, 1915July 16, 1998) and pioneer in the creation of Pan African and 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, the youngest child of John Clark, a sharecropper, and Willie Ella Clark, a washer woman, who died in 1922. ). With the hopes of earning enough money to buy land rather than sharecrop, his family moved to the closest mill town in 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". He also joined the U. S. Army during World War II. Clarke was heavily influenced by Cheikh Anta Diop, which inspired his piece "The Historical Legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop: His Contributions to a New Concept of African History". Clarke believed that the credited Greek philosophers gained much of their theories and thoughts from contact with Africans, who influenced the early Western world.

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. 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." 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.

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 implement supporting structures of study groups and informal workshops to develop newcomers and young people. Arriving in Harlem at the age of 18 in 1933, He was an autodidact whose mentors included the scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. 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. Traveling in West Africa in 1958–59, he met Kwame Nkrumah, whom he had mentored as a student in the US, 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. 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". He died of a heart attack on July 16, 1998, at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City.

1985 – Faculty of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University named the John Henrik Clarke Library after him. 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. 2011 – Immortal Technique includes a short speech by Dr. Clarke on his album The Martyr. It is Track 13, which is entitled "The Conquerors".

"On the Other Side: A Story of the Color Line," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 9 (September, 1939): 269–270. "Leader of the Mob: A Story of the Color Line," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 10 (October, 1939), p. 301 303. "Santa Claus is a White Man: A Story of the Color Line," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 17, No. 12 (December, 1939), pp. 365–367. "The Boy Who Painted Christ Black: A Short Story," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 18, No. 9 (September, 1940), pp. 264–266. "Prelude to an Education: A Short Story," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Vol. 18, No. 11 (November, 1940), pp. 335+
"Return to the Inn," The Crisis, Vol. 48, No. 9 (September 1941), pp. 288+
"The Bridge," Harlem Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1949–1950), pp. 2–8. "Return of the Askia," Harlem Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1950), pp. 45–49. "Journey to Sierra Maestra," Freedomways, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1961), pp. 32–35. "The Morning Train to Ibadan," Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Autumn, 1962), pp. 527–530. "Third Class on the Blue Train to Kumasi," Phylon, Vol. 23, 3rd Quarter (Fall, 1962), pp. 294–301. "Revolt of the Angels A Short Story," Freedomways, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Summer 1963): pp. 355–360.