The Unfolding of Afro-American History

[Maplewood, New Jersey]: Scholastic Magazines, 1969. Very good -. 30¼" x 43¾", folds to 7½" x 11". Two-sided poster. Very good minus: ex-library, with a stamp and label; remnants of adhesive at edges in four spots; 1" tear at an intersection not affecting any text; lightly dust-soiled.

This is a large educational poster with one side devoted to a heavily illustrated timeline of African American history with text written by an accomplished African American professor, Norman Hodges. According to the poster, Hodges was teaching at Hampton Institute as of the date of issuance. According to a flyer for a Hodges talk that we located online in the massive FBI file on Malcom X that was declassified in December 1983, Hodges grew up in Michigan and was an alumnus of Fisk University, the London School of Economics, Yale, and Columbia. He received his doctorate in African Studies from Columbia and around the time the poster was issued, Hodges accepted a position at Vassar where he ultimately became the first tenured Black professor in its history department. Hodges also published Breaking the Chains of Bondage; Black History from its Origins in Africa to the Present, in 1972.

This poster was published as a supplement to a teachers' edition of Senior Scholastic magazine (Vol. 95, No. 3, September 29, 1969). Its timeline consists of illustrated panels documenting key points in Black history, beginning with civilization in Ghana as early as 700 AD. It covers the slave trade, revolts and uprisings, emancipation and the growth of important organizations like the NAACP. Photographic images and compelling artwork depict African Americans in the military. There are portraits and biographies of Black leaders both well- and lesser-known, including Benjamin Banneker, poet Phillis Wheatley, James Derham (the nation's first Black physician), Sojourner Truth and W.E.B. DuBois. The poster lists important Supreme Court rulings and concludes with a series of nine great photographic images showing Martin Luther King, Jr., the Watts riots, Stokely Carmichael and the Black Power Movement. The reverse side has a full color map of the world with insets on population distribution and economic division.

A rare, highly visual Black history learning tool. OCLC shows three holdings of the poster over two entries, and a Google search revealed it at three other institutions.