"3. The word 'coffee' comes from Caffa, Ethiopia, where it was first used and where it still grows wild...
"5. The Negro arrived in the New World free from tuberculosis and syphillis or other venereal disease...Syphillis originated in Europe in 1494, when there was a great epidemic of it...
"14. The Ganges, the sacred river of India, is named after an Ethiopian king of that name who conquered Asia as far as this river...
"42. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and father of the Declaration of Independence, was the father of a large number of mulatto children. His wife protested loud and long to no avail..."
J.A. Rogers100 AMAZING FACTS ABOUTTHE NEGROWITH COMPLETE PROOF
"Immensely entertaining and even more instructive. There is something new on almost every page, and you present it with the utmost effectiveness...a very competent job."
H.L. Menckenon SEX AND RACEby J.A. Rogers
J.A. Rogers has been an unsung hero of anthropology and African-American culture of the early to mid twentieth century in much the same way Paul Robeson's cultural legacy of the same time is today. The majority of his work, dating from the early 30s to the mid 1950s, is ironically ignored inverse proportion to the degree his conclusions are proven accurate.
The beauty of this seventy-one page book, however, is the egoless nature of it all. A mental giant and world traveler, J.A. Rogers could have easily written several tomes the likes of which would be ignored by both the general public and the academic world, cutting off his nose in spite of his face for the benefit of proving the voluminous nature of his education and little else. 100 AMAZING FACTS is the exact opposite of this.
"63. The word 'slave' was originally applied to white people. It comes from 'Slav', a Russian people captured by the Germans.
"66. In 1670, Virginia passed a law forbidding Negroes from buying white people...Free Negroes bought white people in such numbers in Louisiana that the state made a similar law in 1818.
"74. The Rock of Gibraltar, the symbol of stability, is named after a Negro ex-slave. It is a corruption of 'Gebal-Tarik' or 'The Mountain of Tarik'. Tarik, who was a Moor, captured the Rock which was then called Calpe, in 711 A.D. Later he conquered Southern Spain..."
The carefully, brilliantly chosen facts which make up the first half of the book are designed to be a combination of enlightening, surprising, disturbing, provocative, even paradigm shifting...yet simultaneously always entertaining. The second half consists of essentially his bibliography, where all of the proof of every fact can be found and authenticated. Perfect for everyone from teenagers (my father first gave me his copy when I was about twelve; I bought it for my fourteen year old son just recently) to interested adults to scholars and educators, you will never spend so little money (less than ten dollars at its highest price anywhere) to get so much knowledge from such a little, entertaining book.
100 AMAZING FACTS is the perfect symbol of J.A. Rogers himself: a complete, concise, well-spoken, honorable treasure--and a gift.
