(NAME-MCE) 4, 000 African-Americans profiled in ambitious biography

[Anselmo Villanueva]

4,000 African-Americans profiled in ambitious biography
Black historical figures whose life stories have been relegated to the edges
of American history are being brought to light again in the "African
American National Biography." The eight volumes retail for $795.

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/stories/2008/01/28/blackbiography_0129.html?cxntnid=amn012908e

Ambitious project brings black Americans, famous and obscure, together

By MARK PRATT

Associated Press

Published on: 01/29/08CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Stagecoach Mary Fields was a
gun-toting, hard drinking, cigar smoking frontierswoman who gambled, brawled
and reputedly even killed a man. Well into her 60s, she dependably steered
her coach through some of Montana's harshest weather to deliver the mail.

She was also a beloved housekeeper at a convent, tended her own vegetable
garden and late in life presented bouquets to men who hit home runs during
baseball games in Cascade, Mont.

'Black achievement has been trapped in amber, and what we've been able to do
is find these people again and restore them so they'll never be lost again,'
said Henry Louis Gates.

Fields, who died in 1914 in her early 80s, is just one of thousands of black
historical figures whose life stories have been relegated to the edges of
American history, but who are being brought to light again in the "African
American National Biography."

The ambitious project, seven years in the making, includes the stories of
more than 4,000 black Americans — from household names, including Martin
Luther King Jr. and former Secretary of State Colin Powell — to the obscure
and almost forgotten, including Fields, and Richard Potter, a
turn-of-the-century magician and ventriloquist.

"Black achievement has been trapped in amber, and what we've been able to do
is find these people again and restore them so they'll never be lost again,"
said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard University scholar and co-editor of
what he says is the largest research project in the history of
African-American studies.

"If someone sat down and read these entries from A to Z, they would have a
complete, new understanding not only of African-American history, but of the
complexity of the American experience."

Many of the people whose biographies appear in the project paved the way for
the more famous who came later, said co-editor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a
professor of history and African-American studies at Harvard.

Take, for example, James McCune Smith, a New York City doctor and
abolitionist in the mid-19th century. "During the antebellum years, there
was no voice more important than James Smith," Higginbotham said. "Even
Frederick Douglass said he looked up to this man. This man was incredible
and the average person has no idea who he was."

Ted Rhodes is another example, she said. The professional golfer battled
against, and broke down, many of the discriminatory policies of the white
golf establishment during the 1950s and 1960s, long before Tiger Woods was
even born, Higginbotham said.

Woods is one of more than 300 athletes included in the compendium, but there
was a conscious effort not to overweigh the work with sports figures and
entertainers, Gates said.

"We could have had 4,000 athletes," he said. "But we wanted to refute
stereotypes, disappoint expectations. So we put more scientists, more
educators, more writers, more politicians in there."

The information in the eight-volume "African American National Biography,"
scheduled to be released by publisher Oxford University Press on Feb. 4, has
until now been scattered, found piecemeal in hundreds of smaller, often
obscure volumes published during the last 200 years.

"I do think that is an extremely important project ... because it locates a
lot of information in one handy source," said John Fleming, president of the
Washington-based Association for the Study of African-American Life and
History.

Unlike the "American National Biography" and similar works that only include
biographies of the deceased, the "African American National Biography"
includes the life histories of the living as well because a disproportionate
number of blacks have made their marks on history just in the past 50 years
or so, Gates said.

The editors originally came up with a list of more than 12,000 names for
possible inclusion, but that was winnowed by an advisory board of academics
who selected the most significant.

The biographies were written by more than 1,700 contributors, from scholars
to amateurs who had never before been published.

Bobby Donaldson, a professor of history and African-American studies at the
University of South Carolina, contributed biographies of early 20th century
black activists Silas X. Floyd, William Jefferson White and Charles T.
Walker. "These are some really compelling life stories and it's hard to boil
them down to just 1,500 words, but this is as comprehensive an
African-American biography as we can do," he said.

Each entry includes a bibliography to make it easier for anyone who wants to
find additional information on a particular person.

The work isn't done yet, either. The biographies of more than 2,000
additional black Americans will be added to the online version, and the
living people could be updated in subsequent editions, Gates said.

The next goal is to solicit donations to get the $995 sets into schools and
libraries.

"I want them to get in the schools and I want them to become part of the
curriculum," Gates said. "I want filmmakers to make films about these
people, I want them to be integrated into the larger narrative of American
history and biography," he said.

"Now, there's no excuse to ignore these people."

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/stories/2008/01/28/blackbiography_0129.html?cxntnid=amn012908e