“Don’t let our history die.” ~Edward Scobie
Dr. Edward Vivian Scobie, author of Black Britannia: The History of Blacks in Britain, distinguished himself as a leading authority on the history of Black people in Western Europe.
Born in Roseau, Dominica on 23 May 1918, and originally named Vivian Edward George Dalrymple, he was educated at the Dominica Grammar School. An outstanding athlete, he represented Dominica’s national teams in both cricket and football. During World War II, he left Dominica for Britain to join the Royal Air Force and remained in Britain after demobilization until the mid-1960s.
During that time, he worked as a journalist in London and adopted the name Edward Scobie. He became a correspondent for the Chicago Defender, as well as for Ebony and Jet magazines. He contributed to many London newspapers, magazines and wire services, and became a frequent broadcaster and scriptwriter for radio and television, including the BBC’s Caribbean programmes. From 1961 to 1963, he edited Flamingo, a monthly magazine published in London for African and Caribbean people in Britain, Africa and the Caribbean.
Through his research and writings, Dr. Scobie became a major authority on the African presence in early Western Europe. He authored numerous scholarly articles and historical essays on the subject, including a series of five articles for the Journal of African Civilizations. One of these, “African Popes,” discussed the lives of three African pontiffs: St Victor I (189–199), St Miltiades (311–314) and St Gelasius I (492–496). A second contribution, “The Black in Western Europe,” extended his exploration of the African presence on the continent. In “The Chevalier de Saint‑Georges,” Dr. Scobie documented the life of the remarkable eighteenth‑century composer, conductor, violinist, swordsman, equestrian and soldier. In “The Moors and Portugal’s Global Expansion,” he argued that:
“Not only did the Moors in their European conquests leave their learning, their culture and their arts. Their blood, the blood of Africa, was to remain and flow in the veins of many a European, be he aristocrat or commoner. Finally, it is left now to investigate, in some detail, that culture which these Islamic sons of Africa left for the benefit of Europe, particularly Spain, and even more so, Portugal. It is this African cultural heritage which set in motion the expansion of Europe.”
Dr. Scobie returned to Dominica in the mid‑1960s and soon took over the editorship of the Dominica Herald from Phyllis Shand Allfrey, who left to establish her own paper, The Star, in 1965. Together with Stanley Boyd, editor of The Chronicle, he helped lead a newspaper editors’ protest against the “Prohibited and Undesirable Publications Act” in July 1968, a struggle that also contributed to the formation of the Dominica Freedom Party. Dr. Scobie became vice‑president of the party, which would go on to dominate Dominican politics during the 1980s and early 1990s.
An active participant in local politics, he served twice as Mayor of Roseau. By 1972, however, he had become weary of the narrow confines of local politics and the prevailing parochial attitudes in Dominica, and moved to the United States to launch a new career in academia. He taught first as an Associate Professor in the African‑American Studies and Political Science departments at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and later taught at Princeton University and at the City University of New York.
At the time of his death from acute myocardial infarction on 14 November 1996, Dr. Edward Scobie was Professor Emeritus of History in the Black Studies Department at City College of New York (City University of New York).
The comprehensive anthology The African Presence in Early Europe, edited by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, was dedicated to Dr. Scobie “in recognition of his pioneering work, over many years, in this long neglected field.” The honorary pallbearers at Dr. Scobie’s funeral mass included Dr. Jan Carew, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Bill Jones, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Marcus Garvey Jr., Dr. Yosef A. A. ben‑Jochannan and Professor James Small (James Smalls).
In addition to Black Britannia, Dr. Scobie also wrote Global African Presence (often published under the title The Global African Presence).
Sources:
http://www.worldafropedia.com/afropedia/Edward_Scobie
http://www.thedominican.net/articles/scobie.htm
