Black Livingstone A True Tale of African Adventure

by Kennedy, Pagan

• ISBN13: 9780670030361
• ISBN10: 0670030368
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-14
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

Black 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.

Author Biography

Pagan Kennedy is the author of seven books, including her most recent novel The Exes. She was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain's prestigious literary award.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
PART I: INTO THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM	1	(102)
``When I Grow Up I Shall Go There''	3	(16)
The Silk Top Hat	19	(14)
Thirty-six Hippos	33	(14)
Unraveling Rivers	47	(14)
Choosing the Kuba	61	(20)
Becoming Bope Mekabe	81	(22)
PART II: THE POISON CUP	103	(100)
The Wedding Dress in the Coffin	105	(20)
A Basket of Hands	125	(22)
To Tell the World	147	(18)
Rubber Harvest	165	(12)
The Trial	177	(12)
The Children's Friend	189	(14)
Epilogue	203	(4)
Acknowledgments	207	(2)
Notes	209	(16)
Bibliography	225	(4)
Index	229