AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | An extraordinary generation: the legacy of William Henry Sheppard, the 'Black Livingstone' of Africa |
| Author: | Austin, Ramona |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Afrique & histoire |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Pages: | 73-101 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Congo (Democratic Republic of) |
| Subjects: | missions African Americans biographies (form) |
| About person: | William Henry Sheppard (1865-1927) |
| Abstract: | William Henry Sheppard (1865-1927), who became known as the 'Black Livingstone of Africa', was one of the most famous missionary-explorers of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in 1865, as an American of African descent at the end of the Civil War, he went to the seminary in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and became a Presbyterian missionary. Sheppard was also a gifted ethnographer who documented with sensitivity and aesthetic appreciation the cultures he encountered. He became an international celebrity championing the human rights of the Congolese and documenting the atrocities of the Congo Free State and the Compagnie du Kasai. Due to his race, his accomplishments fell into obscurity after his death until the 1960s when renewed interest in his story drew scholarly attention. This article does not present a chronology of his experiences in the Congo, but places him in the context of the black intelligentsia of his time and of the education he received that has been characterized reductively as 'reformist'. His story is told from his point of view, as a black man of uncommon gifts and will who operated adroitly in a world of white authority at a critical time in African history. For all of his singular achievements, however, Sheppard must be seen in the context of a community of black missionaries, sponsored by established and independent churches, who aligned themselves with Africans against colonialism. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |
