From Aaron, a former slave without a last name, through Paul BurgessZuber, a 20th century lawyer and professor, the recently publishedAfrican American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2008) is the most extensive and inclusive collection of biographical informationabout African American lives ever published.

The African American National Biography (AANB), co-edited by HenryLouis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Higginbotham, is an eight-volume series thatincludes biographies of more than 4,000 African Americans throughout500 years, dating back to the arrival of Esteban, the first recordedAfrican explorer to set foot in North America.

Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor in the Faculty ofArts and Sciences and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, andHigginbotham, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and African andAfrican American Studies and chair of the Department of African andAfrican American Studies, have included the famous and the infamous, aswell as hitherto obscure individuals.

The series includes national heroes and historical figures such asMartin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass. But the biographies alsoinclude Sissieretta Joyner Jones, a 19th century opera singer; RichardPotter, a magician, sword swallower, and ventriloquist who owned 175acres in New Hampshire and died in 1835; and the pistol-packing,fist-fighting Mary Fields, also known as Stagecoach Mary, of the late19th century.

“These are people that were trapped in historical purgatory,” saysGates. “They were trapped in the amber of the archive, and now theircontributions will never be lost again.”

Also included are local figures and community leaders throughout theUnited States. In many neighborhoods, numerous streets, schools, andplaygrounds are named after prominent community leaders, and thesenames are seen every day — but the person behind the name might not beas well known.

For example, Higginbotham explains, there is a boulevard in Boston’sSouth End called Melnea Cass Boulevard. While she had driven on thatstreet many times, she was not familiar with its namesake until editingthe series, when she learned that Cass was a civil rights activistduring the first half of the 20th century, and is now remembered as the“first lady of Roxbury.” Now, every time Higginbotham drives downMelnea Cass Boulevard, it’s not just a name. It’s a life. Higginbothamemphasizes that the history of the Civil Rights movement now focuses onsuch local leaders in both the North and the South who led theircommunities in the fight against racial inequality.

Not all in the series are native-born Americans, but they did spenda significant period of their lives in the United States. Gates andHigginbotham also made the decision to include contemporary figures inthe series.

The entries were written by more than 1,700 contributors in responseto a call for entries that was put forth in 2001. In 2004, OxfordUniversity Press published a preview book, also edited by Gates andHigginbotham, titled “African American Lives,” which included 400names. In addition to those names published in the printed series, anadditional 2,000 names will be included in a forthcoming onlinedatabase, as part of the African American Studies Center digitalarchive, available through the Oxford University Press Web site.

Entries were written by scholars, graduate students, andjournalists. Many names were contributed by those with personalconnections to the individual, and in this way, the series includeslocal figures who might not have otherwise been included.

The scope of the AANB was always ambitious, and, since issuing thecall for entries, Gates and Higginbotham have compiled a database thatincludes 12,500 names. The extent of the project illustrates the impactof African-American lives on American history, according to Gates.

“Black people have been present in every aspect of American history,but have been in the interstices, in the spaces in between,” saysGates. “In spite of what would seem to most of us [to be] rigid racialboundaries, exceptional black people have always been able to carve outa place for themselves.”

While the African American National Biography is not the first of itskind, it is the first of its magnitude. As Gates explains, the firstAfrican-American biographical dictionary was published in 1808, andmore than 300 of these volumes have been published throughout the pasttwo centuries. In 1987, Gates, along with Randall and Nancy Burkett,published a three-volume index of these biographical dictionaries.

The catalyst for the AANB occurred when Gates was asked by OxfordUniversity Press to write an essay about individuals of his choice whowere included in the American National Biography. To his dismay, hefound that many of the African-American names that he was looking forwere simply not in that series. As a result, Oxford University Pressasked him to edit a national biography of African Americans.

Gates and Higginbotham hope that the books will be used by scholarsand historians, but also will have a place in schools, libraries, andin the homes of African-American families.

“What better way to understand the richness, complexity, and depthof African-American history than through biography, because people’slives are so complex,” says Higginbotham.

SOURCE: HARVARD UNIVERSITY

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