If ever there was a man suited to go undercover to document Belgian atrocities in the inaptly named Congo Free State in 1899, it was the seasoned African-American missionary William Sheppard. Sheppard had mastered several African dialects, had gained privileged access to the impenetrable Kuba kingdom, and had earned an unusual reputation as a Christian more devoted to improving African lives than to saving African souls. So Sheppard was not altogether surprised when Malumba, tribal chief of the Pianga region, proudly showed him 81 hands: the evidence of a ghastly massacre he had just orchestrated.

In fact, it was not Sheppard's "Africanness" that had earned him Malumba's trust: It was his whiteness. He was the Mundele Ndom, "the black white man," and Malumba wrongly assumed that all white men (even the black ones) were loyal to the vast Belgian apparatus that had ordered the massacres in its pursuit of the country's coveted rubber riches.

With Malumba's unwitting help, Sheppard, decked out in his trademark Panama hat and white linen, collected graphic written and photographic evidence of the atrocities carried out at Belgian bidding. After personally counting through the clenched and open-palmed hands, a sickened Sheppard contributed reports to the century's first human-rights crusade: the campaign to end the Belgian horrors that pillaged the Congo and left more than 10 million of its citizens dead.

Pagan Kennedy offers this and other stories in her biography of the man she calls the "Black Livingstone." Sheppard's trail-blazing accomplishments certainly warrant the effort. The son of a barber, Sheppard was raised in Virginia and schooled at Booker T. Washington Hampton Institute and at the Tuscaloosa Theological Institute in Alabama. For an African American even to reach Africa as a Southern Presbyterian missionary was a feat - and one Sheppard could not accomplish until he could find a white colleague to accompany him.

Sheppard gained fame not because of his race but because of his thunderous exploits, which ranged from big-game hunting and landscape architecture to anthropological foraging and art collecting. He won admission to the Royal Geographic Society, paid visits to Queen Victoria and to President Grover Cleveland. His most lasting contribution was probably the new image of Africa he communicated to packed churches on his trips back to the United States. While other missionaries sought to impose Christian doctrine and Western structures on the African continent, Sheppard was an open-minded and curious observer. He found himself dazzled by the cultural richness and complexity of the societies he encountered, visions he impressed upon church colleagues and open-mouthed audiences back home.

Kennedy offers a smoothly written tale of Sheppard's life, and is to be commended for bringing his extraordinary story to greater prominence.

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