Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [132]
Jim Magus’s delightful history, Magical Heroes (Magus Enterprises, 1995), has been a very helpful source on the career of Black Herman, particularly for the dialogue of Herman’s stage act. Other quotes are from Herman’s memoirs. Articles on Black Herman from the Chicago Defender include: “Harlem Healer Given Setback by Woman Cop,” 6/18/27; “ ‘Black’ Herman Given Penitentiary Sentence,” 10/22/27; “Black Herman,” 10/18/30; and “Black Herman, Noted Magician, Dies,” 4/21/34. Articles from the New York Amsterdam News include: “ ‘Black Herman,’ Magician, Held for Trial in Special Sessions as ‘Quack,’ ” 9/7/27, and “ ‘Black Herman’ Given Sentence in Penitentiary,” 10/19/27. Black Herman’s death certificate (April 17, 1934) lists the cause of death as chronic myocarditis, a viral inflammation of the heart, which led to cardiac failure.
The pioneering work of UCLA historian Robert A. Hill has highlighted the connections between Marcus Garvey and New Thought. Hill has meticulously assembled and annotated The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers for the University of California Press. Volumes I (1983) and VII (1990), in particular, explore Garvey and New Thought. Hill’s volume with Barbara Bair, Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons (University of California Press, 1987), is similarly valuable. I am grateful for Hill’s work and advice. For biographical background on Garvey, I have benefited from the documentary Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (American Experience, 2001) and Black Moses by E. David Cronon (University of Wisconsin Press, 1955, 1969).
Sources on L. W. de Laurence include: “William Lauron DeLaurence and Jamaican Folk Religion” by W. F. Elkins, Folklore, vol. 97:ii (1986); “Academic Freedom: Manley’s Heritage,” The Sunday Gleaner (Kingston), 2/18/73; and Carolyn Morrow Long’s Spiritual Merchants (The University of Tennessee Press, 2001).
On the career of Noble Drew Ali, two sources merit special mention: “Shoot-Out at the Circle 7 Koran” by Peter Lamborn Wilson, Gnosis magazine (summer 1989), and “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple” by Susan Nance, Religion and American Culture (2002). Wilson’s work, including his Sacred Drift (City Lights, 1993), has been groundbreaking, and Nance has written with unprecedented thoroughness. Also helpful are: “Black Gods of the Inner City” by Prince-A-Cuba, Gnosis magazine (fall 1992); “Who Was Noble Drew Ali?” by Isa al-Mahdi (Ansaaru Allah Publications, 1988); “Man of Myth and Fact,” The New York Times, 6/29/64; The Black Muslims in America by C. Eric Lincoln (Beacon, 1961); Islam in the African-American Experience by Richard Brent Turner (Indiana University Press, 1997, 2003); African American Islam by Aminah Beverly McCloud (Routledge, 1995); Black Pilgrimage to Islam by Robert Dannin (Oxford University Press, 2002); and Robert Hill, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. VII (University of California Press, 1990).
In addition to the efforts of historian Christopher Paul Moore, the career of Robert T. Browne has been elucidated by Robert Fikes, Jr., in his article and postscript, “The Triumph of Robert T. Browne,” in the January–April 1998 issue of The Negro Educational Review. Arthur A. Schomburg is quoted from Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: Black Bibliophile and Collector by Elinor Des Verney Sinnette (Wayne State University Press, 1989). I am grateful to Thelma Calvo for information on Browne’s Hermetic Society.
Chapter Seven: The Return of the “Secret Teachings”
Details of Manly P. Hall’s early life appear in A History of the Occult Tarot, 1870–1970, by Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett (Duckworth, 2002). Hall offered his own reflections in “Recollections of M.P.H.” from the Winter 1959 edition of the PRS Journal, “Manly P. Hall and the Secret Teachings of All Ages” in the December 1978 PRS Contributors’ Bulletin, “Reflections of M.P.H.” in the Winter 1986 PRS Journal, and in a talk transcribed in the Autumn 1955 edition of the PRS magazine Horizon. Additional details were