Gumby's Peers > J.A. Rogers
J.A. Rogers was a public intellectual best-known for his many newspaper articles, books, and lectures on the topics of African and African-American history. In particular, he made a career out of tracing the many African influences present in Western culture and debunking notions of "pure" racial heritage, researching and publicizing the African lineage of such notable figures as Alexandre Dumas, pere.
While Rogers wrote frequently for African-American newspapers--including a long-running weekly column for the Pittsburgh Courier--he had trouble finding publishers for his book-length projects, many of which he eventually self-published. These included Africa's Gift to America, Sex and Race, and Nature Knows No Color Line, as well as the booklet featured here (see above: "J.A. Rogers," p. [41]). As an example of Rogers' keen sense of the ironies of white supremacism and segregationism, his cover photograph of hooded marchers features a Spanish fraternity of African-descended religious observers, not the members of the Ku Klux Klan that Rogers' readers would have been primed to expect. An example of his weekly column appears opposite (see above right: "J.A. Rogers," p. [40]), alongside one of Rogers' contributions to the "Your History" illustrated feature.