The Making Of An Afro-american: Martin Robison Delany, 1812-1885
by Dorothy Sterling
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Decades before Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X, Martin Robison Delany (1812#150;1885) proclaimed his pride in being black, and demanded not only emancipation but independence for African Americans. Grandson of an African prince, son of a slave, Delany lived a life of singular achievement: the first African-American explorer to venture into the heart of Africa; the publisher, editor, and writer of one of the first black newspapers in the U.S.; one of the first three blacks show more admitted to Harvard Medical School; the first black to hold field grade rank of U.S. Army major during the Civil War; as well as prominent careers as an author, doctor, ethnologist, orator, judge, Freedmen's Bureau official, and spokesman for black nationalism. This assiduously researched biography brings into vivid focus the life and times of Delany, whose militant, uncompromising voice is as vital today as it was more than a century ago. show lessTags
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Author Dorothy Sterling was born on November 23, 1913 in Manhattan. She received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1934. In the 1940's, she worked as a researcher for Life magazine, but left in frustration at a system under which women researchers gave material to men, who wrote the articles. Her first book, Sophie and Her Puppies, was show more published in 1951. She wrote more than 35 books for both children and adults throughout her lifetime including Freedom Train (1954), Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls (1958), Black Foremothers: Three Lives (1979) and Close to My Heart (2005). She won numerous awards for her work including the 1976 Carter G. Woodson Book Award for The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction. She died on December 1, 2008 at the age of 95. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Martin Delany; Catherine Delany
- Important places
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Liberia
- Important events
- American Civil War
- Epigraph
- One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the Am... (show all)erican Negro is the history of this strife. - W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903
- First words
- Graci Peace sat at her spinning wheel in front of the open fire.
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- (3.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
