This is YOUR HISTORY, a revised and enlarged edition of the chronology complied twenty- two years ago,** which contained only 130 pages and, of course, had a very limited scope.  It was, nevertheless, well received and successfully used in college classes, by teachers in the public schools, and by the out–of–school public. The reception of that first edition called for this second edition that would (1) eliminate those aspects preventing it from being as reader friendly as originally intended, (b) be expanded to include the years 1977 to 1980 and (3) be enlarged with the addition of new domestic and international information throughout. These additions served YOUR HISTORY‘s academic purposes well.  Perhaps even more importantly they served our need to avoid having too many “ghee whiz” facts at the expense of information useful to interpreting important world events from an Afrocentric point of view and appreciating more completely the African World’s continuing struggle to build community as well as maintain its influence in shaping the course of human events on the continent of Africa, in the North, South and Central American diaspora, in Europe and Asia, and in the islands of the seas. With the advent of trivia games, it was imperative that this chronological record of African people offset this trend to render African history as just another trivial pursuit.  

As we worked on our revision, Professor Irene Diggs was readying for publication her Black Chronology from 4000 B.C. to the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1983), a revision of her earlier attempt in 1970 (see p. xi). This Black Chronology covered the ancient and medieval periods as well as the era of the slave trade, and gave a brief review of every major book written by an African from the 16th century to 1888. We decided to place our information emphasis, among other things, on those important social and political events that took place between 1600 BC and 1980 and refer the reader to Professor Diggs’s work and the work of the other contemporary chroniclers of the African Experience for additional information. We have, of course, included considerable data not found among the items mentioned in these chronologies; however, we have studiously shied away from duplicating their work.  

To assist finding data quickly, we have used a format that allows the reader to locate information on a person or event according to either a known or suspected date or by using YOUR HISTORY’s comprehensive index. The index references the year each historical event occurred as the locator instead of page numbers. We thought this would eliminate confusion and expedite finding information. This was especially necessitated by the pageless electronic format. The years noted in YOUR HISTORY may have more than one reference to an individual, incident or subject. Moreover, these references may not follow one immediately after the other. We advise, therefore, that all items for a referenced year be read not only to receive additional pertinant information, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to examine this information in historical context.  

We decided to divide YOUR HISTORY into four major sections and 19 subsections, each of which is given a heading based on major and minor themes that help place events contained in this chronological record within historical time and space. Each major section begins with a brief overview of the period covered. These overviews will also help the reader understand historical trends and prevent the events being disconnected from other events which occurred during the same era. This led to the inclusion of events that occurred in world history, i.e., events that are non–African, if you will, but have nevertheless relevance to the history of African people, or provide an appropriate historical backdrop for a more accurate comprehension of the African Experience.  

Our colleagues and others encouraged us, moreover, to add some much needed graphic materials as well. Many more illustrations of important personalities, posters and documents are included along with several diagrams of African inventions, maps,  figures or charts, and tables of historical data concerning West Indians, South Africans and African Americans. This graphic presentation of information not contained in the text’s narrative itself should increase considerably YOUR HISTORY‘s usefulness as a reference work. The names and dates of 389 African American newspapers, journals and magazines, along with the names of their publishers and/or editors when available, have been included. These items date from Freedom’s Journal, first published in 1827, to the St. Louis Recorder, first published in 1943.  We have also highlighted in this chronology African educators and the founding of African educational institutions. Indeed, we have sought to emphasize throughout YOUR HISTORY  the development of African institutions in general. The reader will note that in many instances we have cited authors, titles and publication dates of other sources of information relevant to a particular historical event or personality, hoping to motivate our  readers to continue their efforts to inform themselves about the African odyssey. YOUR HISTORY also contains many more references to events in South African history from the arrival of the Portuguese in 1487 to the Azanian liberation struggles in the latter half of the 20th century.  

All things considered, this edition is a convenient source of immediately accessible information, which is very essential to our desire to have YOUR HISTORY serve as a meaningful learning resource and reference work. It must be understood, however, that no history can possibly include all of a people’s history. YOUR HISTORY is no exception.  Historians must seek out the major historical trends and tendencies and highlight the major personalities, institutions, events, etc. that helped to establish these trends and tendencies.  An itemized chronological account like YOUR HISTORY goes far beyond standard histories and contains many more historical events not usually included as well as single out the historical influence of the common man and woman. But here, too, there is a limit to how inclusive it can be. Even though we admit to having undoubtedly omitted some relevant information, we have compiled a worthy addition to this genre of historiography. Our readers will have to determine for themselves how well this has been accomplished. YOUR HISTORY is, moreover, never completed. Indeed, we must begin now preparing an updated version for the year 2010.  

Throughout YOUR HISTORY, we have referred to people of African descent with the terms “African,” “Black,” “African American,” “African in America,” “American African” and “U.S. African.” These terms are used interchangeably and intentionally to establish the African provenance of the world’s black people in the Americas and in Europe and Asia especially.  These referents are also employed in this chronological record to accentuate the existence of a variety of ways for African people in the United States to refer to themselves and avoid the nonsensical and in some instances derogatory terms used to refer to American Africans, such as “Colored,” “Colored American,” “Colored People,” “Negroes,” “Negro Americans” and “nigger.” The use and meaning of “Black,” used sparingly in YOUR HISTORY, is not as precise ethnologically or geographically as we would like, but is generally more acceptable presently than “Colored People” or “Negroes.” We have used this term occasionally to refer to black people who are not necessarily African, e.g., Samoans, New Guineans, Fiji Islanders, Tasmanians, etc. The readers’ encounter with the use of the term “African” may be confusing for some items. We have, therefore, tried, where some confusion might arise, to provide for each item a context useful in clarifying which segment of the African world community is being referred to.  

Finally, since 1835, when African Americans were advised by their leaders to remove the word “African” from the names of their institutions and organizations in response to pressures from the American Colonization Society (in collaboration with the U.S. government) to deport free Africans, they have been uncertain about how to refer to themselves. It might be asked:  “What’s in a name?”  We believe Richard B. Moore resolved this issue some years ago in his book, The Name Negro, Its Origin and Evil Use (1960).  In 1971, in an “Open Letter on Our People’s Name”*** to the late Bayard Rustin, Executive Director of the Asa Phillip Randolph Institute, Moore stated: “. . . this term  ‘Negro’ . . . has long been a synonym for slave, loaded continuously with scorn and hostility, and still linked in the [white] public mind generally with a vile and repulsive image.”  

The odyssey of African peoples “has been no crystal stair.” It has had its ups and downs, its saints and sinners, its great insights and blurred, contradictory visions. But more than anything else, it has never ceased to be inspirational. This, then, is YOUR HISTORY. We hope you will study it carefully and use your understanding of this history to help further the political, socioeconomic, cultural and mental liberation of African peoples throughout the world.  

Edward W. Crosby  
July 1988, September 1994    
_________________________  

*This Preface has undergone some minor revisions since it was originally published in 1976 to more appropriately reflect the properties of this online edition of YOUR HISTORY. 

**Edward W. Crosby, A Chronology of Notable Dates in the History of Africans in the Americas and Elsewhere (Kent, Ohio:  Institute for African American Affairs, Kent State University, 1976).  

***See the New York Amsterdam News, January 23 and February 26, 1971, for Bayard Rustin’s article,  “What’s in a Name?” and Richard B. Moore’s full reply. See also Carter G. Woodson, “Much Ado about a Name” in The Mis–Education of the Negro (Washington, D.C.:  The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1933), pp. 191–194.  
   

One of the greatest difficulties confronting peoples of African descent wherever they find themselves is that of passing on the socio–cultural experience of the race, its heroes and scoundrels, its hopes and adversities, its successes and failures. A partial cause for this difficulty is, of course, black people’s inability over the centuries to be effectively in control of what should properly constitute an education for black youth. In many instances, what little information has been brought to the minds of students in the schools has usually been proffered in terms of how life in the western world has contributed to the uplift of black people.  Seldom, if ever, has it been entertained in the schools that without the introduction of large numbers  of black people into the Caribbean Isles, South America and especially North America there could not have been the immense industrial, social and political advances which made the United States the so-called refuge for Europe’s downtrodden masses.  

On the other hand there has also been very little attention paid to the obvious fact that the progress of black people on this continent and the isles of the seas has been primarily the accomplishment of black people themselves. In 1924, W.E.B. DuBois wrote in his The Gift of Black Folk that “the North being unable to free the slave, let him try to free himself. And he did, and this was his greatest gift to this nation.” DuBois also stressed the fact that the black man’s bounteous gift to the nation went far beyond the simple removal of the shackles of his physical slavery. Indeed, even before these shackles were removed, the way of life of black people was influencing the mind of the nation and African spiritual values had become an increasingly evident part of the white man’s psyche. “The black laborer brought the idea of toil as a necessary evil ministering to the pleasure of life. While the gift of the white laborer made America rich, or at least made many Americans rich, it will take the psychology of the black man to make it happy.”*  

The Chronology of Notable Dates in the History of Africans in the Americas and Elsewhere is offered to aid students of the black experience in interpreting the deeper meanings of that experience from a Pan–African perspective. Oftentimes information on ourselves is confined solely to the United States of America. Information on the strivings of black people in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, or South Sea Islands is treated as if it had little or no relevancy to black people all over the world. It is the objective of this chronology to sketch out the efforts of African people building communities in sometimes hostile lands, using the help of others, but begging no one, and stressing self–reliance.  
 
It is not to be assumed that this Chronology includes all the notable events occurring in the history of Africans on their Mother Continent or in the Diaspora. A chronology of this sort is not supposed to be a substitute for a history. What it does represent is a handy reference source highlighting the historical trends of centuries of struggle and progress in the face of ever increasing odds.  

Dr. Charles H. Wesley, former Executive Secretary of the Association for the Study of Afro–American Life and History, aptly describes the rationale behind this chronological listing of dates in his introduction to Professor Irene Diggs’ compilation of important dates and events in African history. “Chronology as used in history assigns to events and persons their proper historical dates. It is one of the areas of history. It can be confusing. But without it, history can be indefinite and without history, chronology will be dry and insipid. . . . However, dates are important pegs on which to hang events, and when the long sweep of history is taken into consideration, they bring meaning and a rationale into the study of people and the events which concern them. . . . Students interested in black folk should remember the important dates and devise the means of using them through the principles of association and parallelism.”  

This then is the purpose of this issue of the African American Affairs Monograph Series. It is hoped that it will be of assistance to the acquiring of deeper understanding of the experiences of Africans in America and the world. As indicated elsewhere the work of Professor Diggs is the inspiration behind the publication of this chronology. Professor Diggs’ comprehensive work spans the ancient and medieval worlds beginning with 3500 B.C. in Ethiopian History and ending with 1888 and 1976, for there is no other single comprehensive compilation of dates and events covering this 88–year period. Moreover, additional information is given for the period preceding 1888. The reader is referred to Diggs concerning events occurring in the early periods of the African experience.  

In order to compile the data contained in this monograph, the following sources among others were referred to: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966; E. W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (1887), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967; Roscoe C. Brown and Carolyn A. Dorsey, Black Culture Quiz, New York: The Sperry and Hutchinson Company, 1971 and 1973; Martin R. Delany, “Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party” (1860) in Search for a Place, Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1969; Irene Diggs, Chronology of Notable Events and Dates in the History of the African and His Descendants during the Period of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Inc., 1970; Issac Dookhan, A Pre–Emancipation History of the West Indies 1492–1865, and A Post–Emancipation History of the West Indies, 1838–1975, London: Collins, 1975; Frederick Douglass, The Life and Writings, edited by P. Foner, 4 Vols., New York: International Publishers, 1950; W.E.B. DuBois, The Gift of Black Folk (1924), New York: Washington Square Press, 1970; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, New York: Alfred Knopf Publ., 1974; Walter B. Hoard, Anthology: Quotations and Sayings of People of Color, San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1973; L. Hughes and M. Meltzer, A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1968; David Killingray, A Plague of Europeans, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973; Milton Meltzer, In their Own Words, 3 Vols., New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1965; Carter G. Woodson, Mis–Education of the Negro, Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1933; Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1971; African American Affairs Calendar 1973, Kent, OH: Institute for African American Affairs, Kent State University;  Africa for the Africans at Home and Abroad Calendar 1975, Washington, DC: Drum and Spear Press; Pan–African Affairs Calendar 1974, Kent, OH: Institute for African American Affairs, Kent State University; African Liberation Calendar 1976, NP: African Liberation Support Movement.  

Throughout this edition the terms African, overseas African, African American, Afro–American, American African, U.S. African, and Blacks have been used to designate Africans born and currently residing in the United States. When African is used to refer to those born in Africa, the context of it use will make clear which Africans are being referred to.  

Edward W. Crosby  
July 12, 1976 
_________________________  

*This point is not made to downplay the tremendous economic role black people played in the industrial and economic growth of the American nation. It is made, however, to point out an even more important area of black influence which has received very scanty acknowledgement.   

Africa, the cradle of civilization is the focus of YOUR HISTORY, a valuable compilation of facts concerning Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora. Professor Crosby does a tremendous service for students, academicians, and lay readers alike by bringing together more than 3,000 entries regarding the African experience in world perspective. This volume, however, features more than mere data. YOUR HISTORY also provides a brief analysis as well as historical context for the more significant events and people.  

From Africa to Australia, Canada to the Caribbean, and Mexico to Moscow, YOUR HISTORY presents a comprehensive history of Africans and their immeasurable contributions. This book features microhistory and macrohistory, the familiar and the unfamiliar.  For example, readers are probably knowledgeable about the African heritage of Cleopatra and Leo Africanus but perhaps have not heard of Hanno, the Carthaginian explorer and trader who in 470 CE sailed from north Africa to present–day Nigeria. Most will readily associate Toussaint l’Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines with the Haitian Revolution but not François Capois and others. Moreover, Professor Crosby accurately describes the events in Haiti as the first truly social revolution in the western hemisphere.  Joe Louis, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are known, but Bessie Coleman, an African American woman who became the first to earn a pilot’s license and Josiah Henson, the runaway slave who provided Harriet Beecher Stowe with the model for Uncle Tom’s Cabin may be unknown. Thus, from Africa to Europe, the Caribbean, the Americas and elsewhere, this single volume chronicles the significant events and people impacting and affecting African people. College professors, high school teachers, librarians, and others will find YOUR HISTORY useful for many reasons. This book supplements world, African and African American texts. Librarians will easily gain accessible information for patrons from this reference tool. All readers will increase their knowledge of not only African history but world history in general. A complete and comprehensive index arranged by subject and name further enhances the use value of this volume.  

Although a study of this genre does not lend itself to a thesis, YOUR HISTORY does have a theme developed consistently throughout. Crosby maintains throughout this work that the  extensive contributions of Africans and their descendants are positive and ongoing. In doing so, he also describes the African experience and encounter with racism, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, exploitation, and underdevelopment. The theme stresses the beauty and humanity of Africa and its diverse peoples everywhere. It illustrates the depth of their history and their triumph against all odds. Heroes and heroines are found on every page. They defy and inspire all people who are similarly oppressed.  

While YOUR HISTORY may stand alone as a single source, if used with Ellen Irene Diggs’ similar work, Black Chronology: From 4000 BC to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1983, these books represent the most ambitious collection of facts on Africa and Africans now in print. Singularly or as a companion volume, YOUR HISTORY will significantly advance your knowledge and understanding of the many contributions made to world history by African people.  

Jackie Booker, PhD  
June 8, 1988