Clarke, John Henrik

Impact on the world

Joined Hunter College's faculty in 1969 despite having no high school diploma or doctorate, having taught himself history through decades of independent study and informal teaching in Harlem community centers, and became founding chairman of the college's Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies the same year, going on to a celebrated career as Professor of African World History; he co-founded the African Heritage Studies Association in 1968 and authored or edited over twenty books challenging Eurocentric historical narratives, work that influenced and was directly drawn upon by later Black Studies scholars including Molefi Kete Asante, already profiled in this collection, though some of Clarke's later public statements, including controversial remarks alongside fellow historian Leonard Jeffries about Jewish involvement in the African slave trade, drew significant criticism and public backlash.

Life & background

Born in Union Springs, Alabama in 1915 and raised in Columbus, Georgia, Clarke moved to New York City in 1933 hoping to become a writer, studying history and world literature informally at New York University while teaching himself African and African American history through independent reading; he eventually earned an informal teaching license from a small Long Island institution called People's College. For more than two decades he taught history in Harlem community centers without any formal academic appointment, finally landing his first regular teaching position in 1964 as director of a Harlem anti-poverty program's heritage education curriculum, before approaching Hunter College's dean directly in 1969 and offering, by his own account, to teach two courses for an unusually high salary specifically expecting to be turned down; the college hired him anyway, marking the first time in his life he was paid as a professional educator, reportedly at the direct urging of students who pressed the administration to bring him on. He built Hunter's Black and Puerto Rican Studies department from that position, later also serving as the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University, and became known for lesson plans so exhaustively researched and documented that Harlem's Schomburg Center requested copies for its own archives. His scholarship consistently argued that African contributions to world civilization had been deliberately suppressed or minimized by Eurocentric historians, a position that drew sustained criticism from prominent mainstream historians, including a public exchange with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who characterized some Afrocentric scholarship as historically inaccurate; Clarke responded that the discomfort such critics felt stemmed from confronting uncomfortable truths rather than from any inaccuracy in his own work. He also drew significant, more serious controversy in his later years for public remarks alongside colleague Leonard Jeffries concerning Jewish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, statements widely condemned as historically misleading and antisemitic. He continued lecturing internationally even after losing his eyesight and retiring from Hunter in 1985, and Cornell named a new library branch in his honor that same year; he died in 1998.

Sources

1. Kentake Page; University of Illinois African American Research Center bibliography; Amazon (John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History); Black Excellence Community Library archival materials; Cornell University Africana Library