The Black Man: The Father of Civilization Proven by Biblical History.

"THE BLACK MAN HAS BEEN MISREPRESENTED BY PREJUDICED HISTORIANS AND LECTURERS"

Revised edition. Halftone photographic portrait vignette to title-page, plus numerous halftone illustrations throughout. 16mo. Original black card wrappers with title printed in white. A few spots, corner creases and light wear, overall a very good, sound copy. 64pp. Chicago, Fraternal Press,

A scarce chapbook, produced by an influential Black preacher, "evangelist and Biblical lecturer". Webb dedicates this work first to his enslaved mother, Mary Ann Webb, "to my coloured teachers second, and to myself last". 

 

In the pages that follow Webb challenges racist interpretations of Biblical lore, and most significantly seeks to prove through chapter and verse evidence that Jesus was a Black man. At the end of the pamphlet there is an advertisement for Webb's publications including a "Picture of Jesus as a Coloured Man". The original price of $.50 has been struck and corrected to 75c in ink. The advertisement bears a portrait of Black Chicago bookseller Ambrose D. Hayes, with the address and information on his Hayes Book Store: "Established 1911 and carries every coloured newspaper that is printed also books of every coloured author."

 

First published in Seattle in 1910, this title went through three previous Chicago editions (1914, 1919 and 1924), though no copies of the present edition are traced in OCLC. This edition is extended with a section on Marcus Garvey, another addendum on the Black Cross Nurses (the author identifies one of the nurses pictured as his own daughter), and another advertising the 1925 production of a film to be titled "Moses was found, named and rescued from death by a coloured woman". The star of this picture was to be another of Webb's daughters, Miss Francis N. Webb ("Reserved Biblical Movie Star"), and the author was to direct. The films are advertised as an investment opportunity, and if indeed any of them were made, they have vanished without a trace. 

Stock Code: 245715