Mother Africa

In 1909, the pioneering black historian and sociologistW.E.B. DuBois proposed the creation of a “Negro Encyclopedia” to be called “Encyclopedia Africana.” It would be the black equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Judaica and cover “the chief points in the history and condition of the Negro race.”

Although Dubois was unsuccessful in bringing his dream to fruition, the dream did not die at his death in 1963. Ten years later, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah were students at Cambridge University. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright who became the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, was teaching there at the time, and the three men vowed to one day edit a “Pan-African encyclopedia of the African diaspora.”

The careers of Appiah and Gates brought them to Harvard University, where Appiah is a professor in Afro-American Studies and Philosophy and Gates chairs the Afro-American Studies department. In 1995, Appiah and Gates received funding from music producer Quincy Jones and publisher Sonny Mehta, among others, for a CD-ROM encyclopedia about Africa and its descendants. Two years later Perseus Books, parent company of Basic Books, and the Microsoft Corp. agreed to fund this volume, with Wole Soyinka chairing an advisory board of international scholars.

More than two dozen black encyclopedias have been published since 1895, but in their introduction Appiah and Gates write that “none has explored in a single compass both the African continent and the triumphs and tragedies of Africa’s people and their descendants around the globe.” Two-fifths of this volume’s text focuses on Africa, a third on Latin America and the Caribbean, and less than a third on North America. The remaining entries are either cross-cultural or discuss the “African presence in Europe, Asia or the rest of the world.”

The volume’s 2,000-page, 2 million-word text focuses on social and political history, literature and the arts “to give a sense of the wide diversity of peoples, cultures, and traditions” as well as “a feel for the environment” in which the history of African peoples has been lived.

Measuring 8 1/2 by 10 7/8 inches, almost 3 inches thick and weighing at least 10 pounds, “Africana” is attractive and well-designed. Each page is laid out in three columns in a clean, easy-to-read type. Entries are headed with the region of the world or area of interest followed by headnotes in bold type that give a precis of the article’s contents. There are more than 3,000 articles from aardvark to zydeco, some of essay length, and more than 1,000 illustrations, maps and photographs, most in color. In addition to the basic informational entries, there are 12 major “featured essays” on such subjects as the Harlem renaissance, Du Bois, the transatlantic slave trade and the civil rights movement by such scholars as David Levering Lewis, Cornel West, Stephen Behrendt and Patricia Sullivan. In addition, there are numerous shorter essays headed “An Interpretation” covering a variety of interesting subjects, such as AIDS in Africa, blacks in London, feminism in Africa, and homosexuality in Africa, to mention just a few.

Though one can use “Africana” as a reference work, given that most of us are ignorant of much of what it contains, it is the first reference work I have encountered that is attractive enough and accessible enough to simply pick up, open to any page and start reading. This is a volume to peruse rather than leave on the shelf until one wants to look something up. There are entries for every ethnic group on the African continent, from the Abe of Co^te d’Ivoire to the Zulu of South Africa. Such entries serve to particularize the people of Africa, who have been homogenized for too long under the rubric of African. The countries of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are covered in major articles outlining the histories from ancient times to the present, followed by a very useful section called “Ready Reference,” where basic data and statistics are summarized. The photographs, charts, tables, geopolitical and thematic maps throughout greatly amplify the text and add enormously to the volume’s effectiveness in making concrete the lives and cultures of African peoples.

Biographies of most of the important figures one might look for in such a volume are given, including those of athletes and entertainers as well as hundreds of men and women to whom you feel you should have been introduced at some point in your education.

One of the more interesting and perhaps controversial aspects of “Africana” is the inclusion of people many do not ordinarily think of as African. Chief among these Julius Lester is the author of 30 books for children and adults. His most recent work, “Pharaoh’s Daughter,” will be published in March. He teaches in the Judaic studies, English and history departments of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

would be the early Christian Augustine of Hippo who, until age 28, lived in present-day Algeria and Tunisia. Others are writers Albert Camus, Albert Memmi, Nadine Gordimer, Alan Paton, Jean Rhys and Olive Schreiner. The editors have sensibly opted for an inclusive definition of Africa rather than a racial one, accurately reflecting the continent’s demographic realities. However, did Camus identify himself as an African writer, or Algerian and French? Does Albert Memmi view himself as an African writer, or Jewish and Tunisian? Whatever the answers, the inclusion of such biographies in “Africana” raises interesting questions about identity and who determines what it is.

It is unfortunate that the editors do not explain their basis for deciding whom and what to include and omit, because there are entries and omissions which are puzzling. St. Augustine was included, but the important and influential church father Origen was omitted, although he was born in Alexandria and taught there for 28 years. There is a separate entry for John Brown, but William Lloyd Garrison, as influential an abolitionist as Brown, is mentioned only in the entries on “Abolitionism in the United States,” and Garrison’s newspaper, “The Liberator.” And while it can be argued that the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the black journalist and activist sentenced to death in Pennsylvania for the murder of a policeman in 1981, is compelling, is it significant enough to warrant a biographical entry in an encyclopedia?

Because encyclopedias are regarded as authoritative, it is reasonable to expect that they will be free of errors of commission and omission. “Africana” is not. It is disturbing that in the biographical entry for James Chaney, a civil rights worker murdered in Mississippi in 1964, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the two white civil rights workers murdered with him, are referred to as “two white activists” but are not mentioned by name. They are, however, named in the article on “Freedom Summer.” Blues singer Muddy Waters did not get his nickname “from his hobby of fishing in a nearby creek” but from his grandmother, who called him her “muddy baby” because he liked to play in the mud. Although Waters was first recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax, it is surprising that the article does not also mention that black musicologist John W. Work of Fisk University was involved in that recording session. Work’s contribution to the preservation of black spirituals and work songs made him deserving of a separate biographical entry, as did the work of Arthur Fauset, a pioneering collector of black folk material. The article on black activist Stokely Carmichael mentions his marriage to singer Miriam Makeba but not their divorce. No date of death is given for actress Butterfly McQueen, who played Prissy in “Gone With the Wind.” The entry for civil-rights activist Diane Nash ends in 1965, though she is still alive, and the one for civil rights activist Bob Moses has a 14-year gap from 1964 to 1982. Why is there a biographical entry for Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III but none for Ramses II, the greater of the two? The biographical information on writer Arna Bontemps fails to mention that he was the first black writer to have a book accorded a Newbery Honor Medal, an accolade in children’s literature second only to the Newbery Medal itself. Although Virginia Hamilton is mentioned in the article on children’s literature, Hamilton has won every major national and international children’s award and received a MacArthur “genius” grant. She deserves a separate biographical entry. And, though I am flattered at the reference to my work in the article on children’s literature, to write that “Julius Lester retold slave narratives and folk tales in his novels” is simply not true.

Though I do not question that the majority of the information in “Africana” is accurate, these and other minor misstatements will be repeated and accepted as fact, and this will be unfortunate.

The entries are competently written, though one would wish for a more judicious use of adjectives and adverbs. In one essay we learn that slaves “watched as the liberty they so ardently pursued was postponed.” (Emphasis added.) I prefer encyclopedias to be a little more dispassionate. In other instances rhetorical excess leads to exaggeration of facts. Edward Wilmot Blyden, the 19th century thinker whose work helped lay the foundation for Pan-Africanism, is reported as believing that white supremacy was so much a part of America that blacks would always be discriminated against “unless they lived in an all-African country, a view many other black thinkers eventually shared.” (Emphasis added.) If one deletes “many,” one has a more accurate description of the historical reality. Ethiopian Jews in Israel are described as facing “constant challenges to the authenticity of their Jewishness.” Again, delete “constant” and one has a more precise description of the reality. The article on minister Louis Farrakhan makes the claim that his “controversial” remarks characterizing Judaism as a “gutter religion” and Adolf Hitler as “a great man . . . were widely condemned by other black leaders.” Again, deleting “widely” and substituting “some” for “other” would be more accurate.

The most glaring omission from “Africana” are bibliographies for each article. Although there is a bibliography at the end of the volume, one of the most useful features of both Encyclopaedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Judaica is the use of bibliographies at the end of each article. The inclusion of a bibliography for each article here would give direction to those wanting to learn more and provide informed readers with the sources of the information given.

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My criticisms notwithstanding, “Africana” is a major achievement. I suspect that had resources been unlimited, Appiah and Gates would have been able to address the omissions I have referred to as well as many others they wanted to include. There is only so much that can be done in one volume, and nothing can detract from the accomplishment “Africana” represents. This encyclopedia is not primarily for scholars or even students but for the general public, which is emphasized by the endorsements from Michael Jordan, Quincy Jones, Maya Angelou, Julian Bond and others.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Du Bois wrote that the century’s primary problem was “the problem of the color line.” At the beginning of the 21st century, the publication of “Africana” arrives to say that the color line was not drawn in indelible ink. If whites think this is a volume for blacks only, the color line will only become broader and thicker. If we truly believe that education and knowledge are the prerequisites for eradicating racism, then the publication of “Africana” gives us an important tool we have been lacking. Now, no one has an excuse for being ignorant about Africa and its descendants.