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Black history in Africa and the U.S
Ebony, July, 2006
"I am constantly amazed at how little of the good news or what I prefer to call the 'new news" of Africa is getting through to most Americans. With rare exceptions, the people I encounter, from all walks ands stations of life, still think of Africa as the 'dark continent; made darker still by the ravages of AIDS and the ongoing conflicts that occasionally produce enough carnage to merit a minute or two on a television newscast.
But just as not all Africans are dark [as in skin], neither is the continent a dark place ..."--Charlayne Hunter-Gault. The insightful words appear in the introduction of award-winning journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault's new book NEW NEWS OUT OF AFRICA: UNCOVERING AFRICA'S RENAISSANCE (Oxford University Press, $23). The book, divided into three parts, first focuses on South Africa, then on the continent-wide efforts to make the most changes since the end of colonialism and lastly on the challenges that journalists must confront to report from the continent. With NEW NEWS OUT OF AFRICA, Hunter-Gault promises to redefine what is news about the vast and complex continent and its people and its hopeful future that have been, until now, all but invisible to the outside world. Today, Hunter-Gault is CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent. She also is the author of IN MY PLACE, a memoir of her role in the Civil Rights Movement. In another piece of powerful nonfiction, Lawrence Otis Graham returns to the shelves with THE SENATOR AND THE SOCIALITE: THE TRUE STORY OF AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK DYNASTY (HarperCollins, $26.95). The book looks at the rich and controversial life of U.S. Sen. Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first Black man elected to a full senate term in 1874. Born a slave, he became a wealthy Black Republican, socialized with presidents, owned Mississippi plantations and two Washington townhouses, and once had his name printed on U.S. currency because of his top appointment in the Treasury Department. Already a powerful man, his strategic marriage to Josephine Willson, daughter of a Black Philadelphia doctor who inherited money from her grandfather (founder of the Bank of Augusta), even further enhanced Bruce's profile, both in the affluent Black community and society-at-large. With their fortune and connections to the "right" people, the Bruces were able to send their children and grandchildren to Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University and Radcliffe College. Some of the "right" people included President Ulysses S. Grant, Booker T. Washington and John D. Rockefeller. Those relationships gave them unprecedented power in Washington and New York. But after eight decades of lavish spending, bad investments, tuitions and high-profile law suits, the family collapsed into bankruptcy and humiliation by 1950 when the senator's grandson was sent to prison for embezzlement in a scandalous court case, and his granddaughter married a fledgling Black Hollywood actor who was passing for White. The final family grace note came two years ago. That's when Sen. Bruce's portrait was hung at the Capitol, and only one family descendant attended the ceremony.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
