Was St.Augustine really black? andhow do you know?

Answer 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Canterbury

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo

Neither of these guys look overly dark.

Answer 2

Its not just Black Africa either, It's North Africa and The Middle East too, The root cause = Colonization. The rammifacations of it are still felt today and it is my beleif they are the root cause of the many ills Africa and the Middle East face today. Not the primary but the root cause mind you, all these ills have some colonialistic origins which set them into motion. It's the History that is to cause I would say. take Africa, Because of the disparites caused by Colonization, which is an umbrella term for a lot of bad things that happend to africa during the period, and in the United States slavery, discrimination, social inequality and all that jaz. These are the main factors that have set Blacks back, even though those days are no longer nigh they have a profound effect on today's blacks. Slowly though black people are catching up and overcoming these historical pitfalls. Examples. Colonization raped Africa of its resources, brought in foregin concepts of nationhood in a continent that was primarly still tribalistic, Created artifical borders without regard to ethnicity, Geography and all that jazz, Brought in Guns and other modern warmaking tools which escalated otherwise normal Tribal Skirmishes into Genocides, civil wars and all that. Too much to explain. As for Blacks in America, they only started to get to be treated humanely in the 70's and 60's. Its been several decades since then and they've already made lots of progress given the time that hass passed. Soon america will have a black president....These things take time though.

Answer 3

He and his mother (Monica) were both berbers. I would call the berbers arabic (or maghreb) rather than black or white. Look up pictures of famous Morrocans, or the leaders of the Algerian revolutions in the latter half of the 20th century. Zinadine Zidane, the French soccer player that ended the World Cup with the head butt is of berber descent.
Moammar Gadhafi of Libya is also maghreb (but not berber).

He probably looked like some mix of those.

He wrote about his younger self in The Confessions. I don't recall him ever mentioning race as an issue in his school years either in Algiers or in Rome [the city] ... so he was probably pretty Mediterranean looking. (Not a lot of [natural] blondes in Rome by 400 AD.)

Answer 4

He was no more black than Princess Diana. African does not equate with being black. The area of North Africa he came from was Carthage, settled by the Phoenicians. Even Egypt, at the time was populated by the original Egyptians, the Arabs came with the Islamic invasion, some 200 years later.

Answer 5

Not from the picture I have seen. I believe many children born in Africa in that time could have been seen as mixed. But the picture on the site below shows what looks to be a white Augustine.

Answer 6

Yes he was black, look at the region of world he was born and basically resided in and not every historical figure in our books that made some type of impact is white or male.

Answer 7

Augustine was from Tagaste, Numidia, present-day, Algeria. Although people continue to paint him as a white Caucasian, he would be more the colour of middle eastern Arabs.