Content area
Full text
John Henrik Clarke was the Presiding Elder of the Africana Studies discipline for three decades (from 1968 until his death in 1998). His 1969 election by popular acclamation as the first president of the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA), an organization he founded and led, symbolizes the widespread acceptance of his leadership. No less significant was his appointment to the faculty of the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Department at Hunter College, again by popular demand. Another indication of the recognition of his peerless championship was the naming of the library of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, the John Henrik Clarke Library. He also taught at the Center in the "early founding years" of that program.1
Professor Clarke's disciples and students (both formal and informal) include many who were with him when he led a group of younger scholars and students in a confrontation with the leadership of the African Studies Association (ASA) and the eventual secession from the organization leading to the formation of AHSA.2
His early followers included Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Cheke Unwache, Shelby Smith, and James Turner who appropriately summarized the significance of Dr. Clarke's role in the founding of AHSA as "that organization which positioned him at the center of the evolution of the Black Studies Movement."3 Turner continued, "Professor Clarke is unquestionably one of the principle intellectual and academic mentors in Africana Studies." 4
Professor Clarke's leadership was also widely acknowledged by the critics of the discipline Henry Louis Gates identified him as the "great paterfamilias of the Afrocentric movement."5 Harold Cruise, another critic, asserted:
Clarke is an Africanist of longstanding, one of the few devoted American Negro specialists in African history outside university cloisters. This distinction...has earned him the title of a recognized prophet of African and Afro-American redemption.6
In view of the significant intellectual role played by Professor Clarke, one remarkable fact stands out: the savant was what Dr. Earl E. Thorpe called a historian "without portfolio."7 In other words, at the time John Henrik Clarke was elevated to the exalted position of Presiding Elder of Africana Studies, he had been "self-educated," and in terms of formal education, he had "barely finished grammar school."8
"Self-educated" scholars are a vital part of the tradition among...