HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored twenty-one books and created seventeen documentary films, including Wonders of the African World, African American Lives, Faces of America, Black in Latin America, Black American Since MLK: And Still I Rise, and Finding Your Roots, whose fourth season in currently in production with PBS. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross which he wrote, executive produced, and hosted earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program Long Form, as well as a Peabody Award, and Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, and an NAACP Image Award. Gate s latest film is the six-hour PBS documentary Africa s Great Civilizations.

1. Which journalist was among the first to bring black history facts to the masses? 3
2. How many Africans were taken to the United States during the entire history of the slave trade? 9
3. Who was the first African to arrive in America? 10
4. Who was the first black saint? 12
5. Who was the first black president in North America? 14
6. Who were Africa s first ambassadors to Europe? 16
7. Who was the first black explorer of the North American Southwest? 18
8. Which slave literally wrote his way to freedom? 20
9. What was the first black town in North America? 23
10. Who was George Washington s runaway slave? 25
11. Who was the first black person in the United States to lead a back to Africa effort? 28
12. Who was the first black person to see the baby Jesus? 31
13. Where was the first black town in what is now the United States? 34
14. What happened to the forty acres and a mule that former slaves were promised? 37
15. Were slaves actually eaten by dogs? 40
16. Where was the first Underground Railroad? 44
17. What was the second Middle Passage? 46
18. How much did the cotton industry shape American history and the lives of enslaved Africans? 48
19. How much African ancestry does the average African American have? 51
20. Who originated the concept of the talented tenth black leadership class? 54
21. Who was the first African-American fighter pilot? 57
22. Did black people own slaves? If so, why? 60
23. How did Harriet Tubman become a legend? 65
24. When did black literature begin to address African-American sexuality? 69
25. Is most of what we believe about the Underground Railroad true? 73
26. Did Russia s Peter the Great adopt an African man as his son? 77
27. Were Alexander Pushkin s African roots important to him? 80
28. Was Jackie Robinson court-martialed? 84
29. What were the largest slave rebellions in America? 88
30. What were the biggest acts of betrayal within the enslaved community? 93
31. What is one of the most novel ways a slave devised to escape bondage? 98
32. Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history? 102
33. Were there any successful slavery escapes by sea? 107
34. How was black support enlisted for World War II, when the armed services were segregated? 112
35. How did the Black Sambo memorabilia that is collected today come to be? 117
36. Who was Plessy in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case? 121
37. What is Juneteenth? 126
38. Who was the first black American woman to be a self-made millionaire? 130
39. Did black combatants fight in the Battle of Gettysburg? 135
40. Before Emancipation, didn t most free blacks live in the northern half of America? 140
41. Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there? 145
42. How did the son of a former slave defy the color bar to become a wealthy fixture of European nightlife during the Jazz Age? 149
43. Which massacre resulted in a Supreme Court decision limiting the federal government s ability to protect black Americans from racial targeting? 154
44. Which episode of racial violence destroyed the community known as the Black Wall Street ? 159
45. How could integrating information about the fight for civil rights into K 12 curricula better educate our children and foster a real conversation on race? 164
46. Which civil rights leader and gay barrier-breaker was kept in the shadows by the civil rights movement establishment? 167
47. Did Martin Luther King, Jr., improvise in the Dream speech? 172
48. Which enslaved African managed to press his case for freedom all the way to the White House? 177
49. Who was history s wealthiest person? 182
50. W

The first edition of Joel Augustus Rogers s now legendary 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, published in 1934, was billed as A Negro Believe It or Not. Rogers s little book was priceless because he was delivering enlightenment and pride, steeped in historical research, to a people too long starved on the lie that they were worth nothing. For African Americans of the Jim Crow era, Rogers s was their first black history teacher. But Rogers was not always shy about embellishing the facts and minimizing ambiguity; neither was he above shock journalism now and then.
 
With élan and erudition and with winning enthusiasm Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Roger s work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African-American history in question-and-answer format. Among the one hundred questions: Who were Africa s first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history s wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry? Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there? Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history? Where was the first Underground Railroad? Who was the first black American woman to be a self-made millionaire? Which black man made many of our favorite household products better?
 
Here is a surprising, inspiring, sometimes boldly mischievous all the while highly instructive and entertaining compendium of historical curiosities intended to illuminate the sheer complexity and diversity of being Negro in the world.

(With full-color illustrations throughout.)