THE BLACK PACE SETTERS
PRODUCED, DIRECTED AND NARRATED BY NATHANIAL MONTAGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ... Nathanial Montague is
owner of the largest independent library of Negro history
in the world. All books are written by or about Negros.
He is probably the best read Negro historian alive today;
much of his time is spent teaching and lecturing to young
black students on their heritage. As number one disc
jockey at station KGFJ, Los Angeles, Montague was
enlisted by the mayor and chief of police to help quell
the Watts riot of 1965. The assurance of Montague,
asking the people "to have mercy," is credited with
greatly saving lives and property of the Watts citizenry.
LINER NOTES FROM THE ORIGINAL RELEASE:
The idea of great men living and giving theft lives anonymously is not unusual. Between the lines of history many nameless
heroes have vanished for the want of scribes or survivors to pass along their deeds. Where deeds are tangible, however, and of continuing value to society, the unknown soldier (scientist, educator,
inventor, religious leader) is rarely a valid persciage, particularly
in a nation where achievements of this kind are widely publicized.
The American experiment has been scrutinized, for the most
part, in unsparing detail. Its record is tainted, however, by an imbalance in its cast of characters. Not only Americans, but world
figures in history, suffer the most undemocratic fate of omission
from the majority of texts: because they happen to be black. This
works in several ways, the most flagrant of which is total exclusion.
What the average American, white or black, knows of Crispus
Attucks, Harriet Tubman or Paul Laurence Dunbar is infinitesimal.
Then there is the token integration into histories of Booker T. Wash-
ington, G. W. Carver or Samuel Coleridge Taylor-all unfairly
made the standard bearers of an impossibly diminished racial
greatness. Lastly, where there is representation of such figures as
Aesop, Hannibal or the Queen of Sheba, there is not the slightest
mention of their black ancestry.
What this record in the Black America series tries to achieve
is a text for the ages, an inspired account of Afro-Americans and
world leaders whose effect on history has been pivotal and, at
nes, decisive. It develops the "I Have Seen . . ." approach fac-
tually but dramatically. Indeed, the austerity in its selection of sub-
jects is deliberate: Arts and entertainment figures are counted
among the known, and they are not included.
What, then, shall we say of the black statesman or physician-the new textbook heroes who must be counted for the inspiration
and examplo they provide, and whose skin may be as "black as the
night that cvvers them?" Napoleon said of Hannibal that he, in
challenging the. might of Rome with a force outnumbered fifteen
to one, :vas the most audacious of all men." The same could have
been said of Toussaint L'Ouverture by his contemporaries, or of
the famous Buffalo Soldiers whom the defeated Spaniards called
"black devils" in describing their attacks on San Juan Hill.
Crispus Attucks was the first man killed in the American Revo-
lution. Is this black martyr not, then, legally the first American citi-
zen? Black men and women must at all costs be written 'tack into
the book of life" which they have so richly and tirelessly endowed.
This record tells of more than forty such absentees, but the list goes
on. It is hoped that this and other issucs of Black America will pro-
mote further research as the lives of those studied will serve to
illuminate every other endeavor of man.
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