100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof

Book excerpt: White supremacy-busting facts that ran in the black publication the Pittsburgh Courier, written by the renowned African American author and journalist. First published in 1934 and revised in 1962, this book gathers journalist and historian Joel Augustus Rogers’ columns from the syndicated newspaper feature titled Your History. Patterned after the look of Ripley’s popular Believe It or Not the multiple vignettes in each episode recount short items from Rogers’s research. The feature began in the Pittsburgh Courier in November 1934 and ran through the 1960s. “I have been intrigued by this book, and by its author, since I first encountered it as a student in an undergraduate survey course in African-American history at Yale . . . Sometimes, [Rogers] was astonishingly accurate; at other times, he seems to have been tripping a bit, shall we say.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Root “Rogers made great contribution to publishing and distributing little know African history facts through books and pamphlets such as 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof and The Five Negro Presidents . . . The common thread in Roger’s research was his unending aim to counter white supremacist propaganda that prevailed in segregated communities across the United States against people of African descent.” —Black History Heroes