Full Description
People, young and old, need stars to guide them. They need models to construct their own identity, to build their self-esteem, to change the way they see the world and to overcome their own and others' prejudice.
During my childhood, many stars were pointed out to me. I admired them, dreamt about them: Socrates, Baudelaire, Einstein, Marie Curie, General de Gaulle, Mother Teresa... But nobody ever spoke to me about black stars. The world of my education was white, from the colour of the school walls to the pages of my textbooks. I knew nothing about my own ancestors. Slavery was the only black subject ever mentioned. In this vision, the history of Black people could only ever be a vale of tears and strife.
Can you tell me the name of a black scientist?
A black explorer?
A black philosopher?
A black pharaoh?
If you don't know the answer to these questions, then, whatever the colour of your skin, this book is for you. Because the best way to fight racism and intolerance is to educate ourselves and to broaden our imaginations.
The portraits of the men and women in this book are a product of my own reading and my interviews with scholars. Starting with Lucy and ending with Barack Obama, and along the way meeting Aesop, Dona Béatrice, Pushkin, Anne Zingha, Aimé Césaire, Martin Luther King and many others. These stars have allowed me to reject the idea that I am a victim, to renew my faith in mankind and, above all, to believe in myself.
- Lilian Thuram
This translation of Lilian Thuram's bestselling 2010 volume, Mes Etoiles Noires, by Laurent Dubois (University of Virginia), finally brings his anti-racism work to the attention of an English-language audience (the book has already been translated into several European languages). At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has reminded us of the need to tell more complex stories about our shared past, this volume constitutes a timely intervention by a prominent black sporting figure.
Contents
Introduction
Our African 'Grandmother'
Lucy
The Black Pharoahs
Taharqa
A Wise Man from Ancient Greece
Aesop
'Every Life is a Life'
The Hunters of Manden
The Pride and Courage of a Queen
Anna Zingha
The Struggle for a New Kingdom
Dona Beatriz
General-in-Chief of the Russian Imperial Army
Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal
A Philosopher from Ghana
Anton Wilhelm Amo
The Musician of the Enlightenment
Chevalier de Saint-Georges
'Uproot the tree of slavery with me'
Toussaint Louverture
The Liberator of Haiti
Jean-Jacques Dessalines
The Poet of Paradise Lost
Phillis Wheatley
The Oath of the Ancestors
Guillaume Guillon Lethière
'A first shot up to shatter the fog'
Louis Delgrès & Solitude
'Ain't I a Woman?'
Sojourner Truth
The Greatest Russian Poet
Alexander Pushkin
The First Black American Presidential Candidate
Frederick Douglass
Smuggling in the Name of Liberty
Harriet Tubman
Against the Invention of the Races
Joseph Anténor Firmin
The First Black 'Nègre' at the École Polytechnique of France
Camille Mortenol
The First Man to Reach the North Pole
Matthew Henson
A Whirlwind on Two Wheels
Major Taylor
The Hell of the Human Zoos
Ota Benga
Back to Africa
Marcus Mosiah Garvey
'No time rest, all the time make war, all the time kill blacks'
Tirailleurs Sénégalais
Champion of the World
Battling Siki
The Black Dragonfly
Panama Al Brown
A Pen of Rage
Richard Nathaniel Wright
The Silent Resistance Fighter
Addi Bâ
The Genius of Black Scientific Pioneers
Scientists, Inventors, Researchers...
'Trees in the South Bear Strange Fruit'
Billie Holliday
'Our Time Has Come'
Aimé Césaire
Returning Africa to Her Children
Patrice Emery Lumumba
Black Skin, White Masks
Frantz Fanon
The Spark
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
Liberty or Death
Malcolm X
A Dream that Changed the World
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr
A Militant for the African People
Mongo Beti
'I am super fast! I fight with my mind.'
Muhammad Ali
The Man who ran the Gauntlet
Tommie Smith
From Ten Thousand Days in Prison to... the Presidency
Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela
Interplanetary Voyager
Cheick Modibo Diarra
The Voice of the Voiceless
Mumia Abu-Jamal
The Emotional Truth of Rap
Tupac Amaru Shakur
The Star of Hope
Barack Hussein Obama
No, This Map is Not Upside Down
Words that Liberate the Future, by Gilles-Marie Valet
Bibliography
