Scientists now have abundant evidence that the human population never numbered less than ten thousand, originated out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, and descended from ancestors that we share in common with several other species (some now extinct, some still living). A world that is still riding on the shoulders of giants.Ĭhurch tradition has long held that humanity arose from two people living in a garden of paradise in the Mesopotamian basin roughly six thousand years ago. Kareem tells what it took to get these revolutionaries to Harlem and how they changed the world. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born in the midst of a cultural reawakening, carried on the shoulders of athletes trying to prove there was a lot more at stake than a ball game, men and women who made music that could break your heart, and writers and intellectuals who gave voice to not just the ideals of a movement but the raw emotions. Meet the athletes, jazz musicians, comedians, actors, politicians, entrepreneurs, and writers who not only inspired Kareem's rise to greatness but an entire nation's. Travel deep into the soul of the Renaissance - to the night clubs, restaurants, basketball games, and fabulous parties that have made footprints in Harlem's history.

Beginning with the rise of the Harlem Rens as pioneers of professional basketball, Kareem traces the many streams of historical influence that converged to create the man he is today - the NBA's all-time leading scorer and a veritable African-American icon. In On the Shoulders of Giants, indomitable basketball star and bestselling author and historian Kareem Abdul-Jabbar invites the reader on an extraordinarily personal journey back to his birthplace, through one of the greatest political, cultural, literary, and artistic movements in our history, revealing the tremendous impact the Harlem Renaissance had on both American culture and his own life. Johnson, and the triumphant music of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong gave voice and expression to the thoughts and emotions that Jim Crow segregation laws had long sought to stifle.

Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, the fervent fiction and poetry of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, the groundbreaking art of Aaron Douglas and William H. Do not duplicate in any form without permission.From 1920 to 1940, the Harlem Renaissance produced a bright beacon of light that paved the way for African-Americans all over the country.

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