Ben Ammi Ben Israel 1939 – 2014
Ben Ammi Ben Israel: Black Theology, Theodicy and Judaism in the Thought of the African Hebrew Israelite Messiah (Bloomsbury Studies in Black Religion and Cultures)
This text introduces Ben Ammi, the leader and theologian of the African Hebrew Israelite community, as a systematic thinker and theologian. It examines his many books and speeches in order to provide a comprehensive introduction to his thought in the context of both African American and Jewish contemporaries and precursors.
Divided into three thematic sections, History, Law, and Language, the text introduces Ben Ammi's understanding of the nature of God, the responsibilities of the human, and the narrative of history. Ben Ammi was a deeply spiritual but also remarkably modern thinker who blended scientific thought into his evolving socio-theology, while seeking to remove religion from the realm of mythology. The book evaluates how Ben Ammi's theology is one bound to concepts of humility and learning how to go with the grain of the natural world in order to find humanity's true center as a part of nature.
Ben Ammi Ben Israel: Black Theology, Theodicy and Judaism
During the turbulent Civil Rights era, an uneasy alliance developed between some Black Jews and
Rabbinic Jews, but rejection soon followed. Black Judaism has never had a large number of adherents, but its influence far exceeds its numbers,
making it one of the most important social movements in African-American history.
Black Judaism: Story of a an American Movement
“Ben Ammi Ben Israel is not a name that is burnished on the consciousness of many people
outside of the relatively small world of those interested in and committed to Black
liberation. Miller's book is therefore a timely and a bold restatement of the man
and his theological, political and ethical ideas concerned with the selfactualisation
and self-determination of Black people ... This excellent text is a reminder of an important voice in the Black radical tradition that should be reclaimed.” ― Anthony G. Reddie, Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture, University of Oxford, UK
"Wealth is to have your own Land, Language and Culture! Where is the Land of the African American? What is the Language? And, Where is the Culture of the people?" -- Ben Ammi Ben Israel
Ben Ammi Ben-Israel (Hebrew: בן עמי בן-ישראל; October 12, 1939 – December 27, 2014) was the American-born founder and spiritual leader of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem.
Ben Ammi Ben Israel was considered the 'Abba Gadol' (Great Father) to his followers, (the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem) also known as the Black Hebrews.
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Malcolm X 1925-1965
Malcolm X (/ˈmælkəm ˈɛks/; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
(Arabic: الحاجّ مالك الشباز), was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate
for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. Detractors
accused him of preaching racism, black supremacy, and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African
Americans in history.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and leader in the African-American
Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has
become a national icon in the history of American progressivism.
A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful struggle
against segregation in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national
attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington,
where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.
He also established his reputation as a radical, and became an object of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO for the rest
of his life. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to
government officials, and on one occasion, mailed King a threatening anonymous letter that he interpreted as an attempt to make him
commit suicide.
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Lena Horne 1917 – 2010
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American dancer, actress, singer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned over seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood.
Horne advocated for human rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963.
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Benjamin Banneker 1731-1806
Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 9, 1806) was a free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer.
Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African American woman and a former slave, Banneker had little formal education and was
largely self-taught. He is known for being part of a group led by Major Andrew Ellicott that surveyed the borders of the original
District of Columbia, the federal capital district of the United States.
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Sojourner Truth 1797-1883
Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜrnər ˈtruːθ/; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree,
an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but
escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win
such a case against a white man. Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851
at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after
the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves.
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Harriet Jacobs 1813-1897
Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813 – March 7, 1897) was an African-American writer who escaped from slavery and became an
abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs' single work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym
Linda Brent, was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the
sexual harassment and abuse they endured.
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Alexander Crummell 1819-1898
Alexander Crummell (March 3, 1819 – September 10, 1898) was a pioneering African-American priest, professor and African nationalist.
Ordained as an Episcopal priest in the United States, he went to England in the late 1840s to raise money for his church by lecturing
about American slavery. Abolitionists supported his three years of study at Cambridge. He developed concepts of pan-Africanism.
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Harriet Tubman 1821-1913
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy
during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made more than nineteen missions to rescue more than
300 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown
recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.
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Booker T. Washington 1856-1915
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to
presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community.
Washington was of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery, who became the leading voice of the disfranchised
former slaves newly oppressed by the discriminatory laws enacted in the post reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. In 1895 his Atlanta compromise called for avoiding confrontation over segregation and instead putting more reliance on
long-term educational and economic advancement in the black community.
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George Washington Carver 1860-1943
George Washington Carver (by January 1864 – January 5, 1943), was an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. The exact
day and year of his birth are unknown; he is believed to have been born into slavery in Missouri in January 1864.
Carver's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet
potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own
food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers
contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for
the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He received numerous honors for his work,
including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
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Ida Wells-Barnett 1862-1931
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist
and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the
United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites. She was active in the women's rights
and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician,
and traveled internationally on lecture tours.
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W.E.B. Du Bois 1868-1963
William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪz/ doo-BOYZ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American
sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois
grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After graduating from Harvard, where he was the first African American to
earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
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Mary McLeod Bethune 1875-1955
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a
school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida, that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an
advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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Jessie Fauset 1882-1961
Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 – April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist and novelist.
Fauset was the editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis. She also was the editor and co-author for the African American children's
magazine Brownies' Book. She studied the teachings and beliefs of W.E.B Dubois and considered him to be her mentor. Fauset was known
as one of the most intelligent women novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, earning her the name "the midwife". In her lifetime she
wrote four novels as well as poetry and short fiction.
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Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the
Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937
novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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E. Franklin Frazier 1894-1962
Edward Franklin Frazier (September 24, 1894 - May 17, 1962), was an American sociologist. His 1932 Ph.D. dissertation The Negro
Family in Chicago, later released as a book The Negro Family in the United States in 1939, analyzed the cultural and historical forces
that influenced the development of the African-American family from the time of slavery. The book was awarded the 1940 Anisfield-Wolf
Book Award for the most significant work in the field of race relations. This book was among the first sociological works on blacks
researched and written by a black person. He helped draft the UNESCO statement The Race Question in 1950.
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James Langston Hughes 1902-1967
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and
columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the
Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue" which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in
vogue".
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Charles Drew 1904-1950
Charles Richard Drew (June 3,1904 –April 1,1950) was an American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher. He researched in the
field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing
large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces. The research
and development aspect of his blood storage work is disputed. As the most prominent African-American in the field, Drew protested
against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, an action which cost him his job.
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Margaret Walker -Born 1915
Margaret Walker (Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander by marriage) (July 7, 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama,– November 30, 1998) was American
poet and writer. She was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago. Her works include the award-winning poem For My
People and the novel Jubilee.
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Lorraine Hansberry 1930-1965
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930[2] – January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and writer. Her best known work, the
play A Raisin in the Sun, was inspired by her family's battle against racial segregation in Chicago.
Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children of Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise
Perry who was a school teacher. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago,
violating a restrictive covenant and incurring the wrath of many neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberrys out
culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1940 decision in Hansberry v. Lee holding the restrictive covenant in the case contestable,
though not inherently invalid.
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Colin Powell -Born 1937
Colin Luther Powell (/ˈkoʊlɨn/; born April 5, 1937) is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States
Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under U.S. President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first African
American to serve in that position. During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as
Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position
during the Persian Gulf War. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was the
first of two consecutive African American office-holders to hold the key Administration position of U.S. Secretary of State.
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Charlayne Hunter-Gault - Born 1942
Charlayne Hunter-Gault (born 27 February 1942) is an American journalist and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio,
and the Public Broadcasting Service.
In 1961, Athens, Georgia witnessed part of the civil rights movement when Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes became the first two
African-American students to enroll in the University of Georgia. She graduated in 1963.
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August Wilson -Born 1945
August Wilson (April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh
Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of
the African-American experience in the twentieth century.
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Carole Moseley-Braun -Born 1947
Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun, (born August 16, 1947) is an American politician and lawyer who
represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She was the first and only African-American woman elected to the
United States Senate, the first African American U.S. Senator for the Democratic Party, the first woman to defeat an incumbent U.S.
Senator in an election, and the first and only female Senator from Illinois. From 1999 until 2001, she was the United States Ambassador
to New Zealand. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Following the public
announcement by Richard M. Daley that he would not seek re-election, in November 2010, Braun began her campaign for Mayor of Chicago.
The former Senator placed fourth in a field of six candidates, losing the February 22, 2011 election to Rahm Emanuel.
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Cynthia A. McKinney - Born 1955
Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is an American politician and activist. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served
six terms in the United States House of Representatives. In 2008, the Green Party of the United States nominated McKinney for President
of the United States. She was the first African-American woman to represent Georgia in the House.
In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in the newly re-created 11th District, and was re-elected in 1994. When her district was
redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Miller v. Johnson, McKinney was easily elected from the
new 4th District in the 1996 election, and was re-elected twice without substantive opposition.
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