This Work Is Dedicated To Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Critical Assessments Of Joel Augustus Rogers
Although Joel Augustus Rogers was largely self-trained, some of the most distinguished scholars of the twentieth century have acknowledged our debt to him. Dr. William E.B. DuBois (1868-1963), perhaps the greatest scholar in American history, wrote that, “No man living has revealed so many important facts about the Negro race as has Rogers.” The eminent anthropologist and sociologist J.G. St. Clair Drake wrote that:
“No discussion of comparative race relations would be complete without consideration of the work of the highly motivated, self-trained historian Joel A. Rogers. Endowed with unusual talent, Rogers rose to become one of the best-informed individuals in the world on Black history, writing and publishing his own books without any kind of organizational or foundation support.”
In April 1987, in a personal interview with me, Professor John G. Jackson (1907-1993) said that:
“Rogers came from Jamaica in the West Indies. He settled in Chicago. He eventually took a job as a Pullman porter so he could visit different cities and libraries and do research. I got an interesting story about that. The story was that in a lot of large cities a lot of libraries were for whites only. Black people weren’t permitted to go into them. So Rogers had to pay the Pullman conductor to go to the libraries and take out books from them. The conductor said, “Rogers, I believe you’re a damn fool. But if you want to throw away your money that way, I’m willing to cooperate.”
Rogers was a field anthropologist. He traveled to sixty different nations and did a lot of research and observing. He had been told when he was a child in Sunday School that God had cursed the Black man and made him inferior. Rogers wanted to prove that the Black man was not inferior.”
After a short illness, Joel Augustus Rogers died in New York City in March 1966 at the beginning of the Black Studies movement. His widow, Helga M. Rogers, reported that “he suffered a stroke while visiting friends and continuing to do research in Washington.” His labors, however, were not in vain. He impact was enormous, his legacy colossal, his place in history secure. Joel Augustus Rogers was a man without peer in gathering up and binding the missing pages of African history. Indeed, Rogers, in the words of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, “looked at the history of people of African origin, and showed how their history is an inseparable part of the history of mankind.”