Afro-American World Almanac

Book excerpt: The Afro-American World Almanac, first published in 1943, when white publishers exhibited little interest in Black History, is Ross Brown's effort to document Black achievements. More a notebook than an almanac, this work is a wonderful time capsule to the past, stuffed with well-known and little-known tidbits about Blacks. We find information on famous kings and queens of Africa, great people in the Holy Bible, and even information on the recently verified Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings relationship. Often the events captured do not follow a chronological timeline and the documentation is at times sketchy--but they are fun to read anyway. Brown has a way of blending the ancient with the modern. He, after all, makes no pretense about being a historian. Brown is a layman, and he compiled this mass of data for other lay people. He wrote and published this book for the "reader on the street," successfully conveying a sense of passion and urgency that are often boiled out of so called "scholarly" histories.