Black LivingstoneBlack Livingstone
a True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-century Congo
Title rated 0 out of 5 stars, based on 0 ratings(0 ratings)
Book, 2002
Current format, Book, 2002, , Available .Book, 2002
Current format, Book, 2002, , Available . Offered in 0 more formatsBlack Livingstone is the first book to chronicle the remarkable life of William Henry Sheppard. As a twenty-four-year-old African American missionary in 1890, Sheppard departed for what was then the Belgian Congo, accompanied by Samuel Lapsley, a white man who had grown up on a plantation and was the son of a prominent Alabama judge. Lapsley died of fever barely a year later, but Sheppard thrived in Africa for three more years before returning to America. Back home, Sheppard was billed as the "Black Livingstone" as he traveled the country, lecturing to packed auditoriums. Black and white, rich and poor alike came to hear his true tales of African adventure. One year later he returned to the Congo, where he witnessed and gathered testimony on the genocide being perpetrated by the Belgian government and the rubber companies, eventually helping to break their hold on the region. Pagan Kennedy unfolds Sheppard's life and times with a novelist's narrative skill and penetrates the complexity of her subject-a man who found power in the Congo but not in the Church to which he dedicated his life, who fought the persecution of Africans but never of blacks in his own country. Beautifully illustrated with archival photographs, Black Livingstonewill appeal widely to readers of books on African history such as King Leopold's Ghostand In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, as well as readers of fiction set in Africa, like Barbara Kingsolver's bestseller, The Poisonwood Bible.
Title availability
About
Subject and genre
Opinion
More from the community
Community lists featuring this title
There are no community lists featuring this title
Community contributions
There are no quotations from this title
There are no quotations from this title
From the community