author
James Morris Webb
A Black minister and religious writer, he is best remembered for arguing that the roots of biblical and world civilization should be understood through Black history. His work also connected him to the wider currents of early 20th-century Black thought and activism.
1 Audiobook
The Black Man, the Father of Civilization, Proven by Biblical History
by James Morris Webb
About the author
Born in Tennessee, James Morris Webb was an American Christian minister and author active in the early 20th century. Library and bookseller records identify him as a preacher associated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and his surviving work shows a strong interest in religion, race, and biblical interpretation.
He is best known for The Black Man, the Father of Civilization, Proven by Biblical History, a book published in 1910. In it, he set out to place Black people at the center of sacred and ancient history, writing for readers who were looking for dignity, evidence, and a different reading of the Bible than the one they usually encountered.
Some library and reference sources also connect Webb with Marcus Garvey's movement and note that he was active as a lecturer and religious figure during the 1910s and 1920s. Many details of his life remain hard to verify with confidence, but his work clearly belongs to a wider tradition of Black religious and intellectual writing that challenged the racial assumptions of its time.