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Clarke arrived in New York in 1933. He would eventually meet personal tutor Schomburg, the scholar whose library became the foundation for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Like Schomburg, Clarke said he had been led to study African history after being told that Black Africans had no history before European colonization.
A documentary film, John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk, was released in 1996. The documentary offers a close-up look at the life of Clarke, who describes his personal history and his views on Africa and Pan-Africanism.
