The Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn

The Life and Times of I. Garland Penn is the first biography of a man who was a major contributor to the study of Afro-American journalism, progress in education and social uplift of the Black community in the era 1880-1930. Penn was instrumental in the founding and financial support of many colleges and universities in America, among which are the following: Bethune/Cookman, Meharry Medical College and Clark University. He brought together Black Americans for many historic meetings and conventions. One of the most unique meetings was The Negro Young People's Congress, a yearly gathering of Black youth and their adult supporters from all across America in the early years of the 20th century.

As a journalist, I. Garland Penn authored The Afro-American Press and Its Editors which to this day is a source authority in research in this area. Penn was editor of The Laboring Man in his early adult years in Lynchburg, Virginia. The Afro-American Press and Its Editors surveys the work of his predecessors and contemporaries in journalism. Because Dr. Penn tended to assume supportive background roles, he is not as well known today as many of his contemporaries who have become household names in Black history. He worked with such well-known people as Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells and Booker T. Washington. It is the goal of this biography to finally give this great man his just recognition.