Nubian Jak
board game
Nubian Jak is a board game, introduced in 1994, that combines questions on historical facts with pop trivia, to highlight some of the achievements by people of colour globally.
The game requires players to use strategy and skill, with a bit of luck to "Out Jak" and "Chill Out" opponents, while trying to get their own pieces to separate Home Zone areas on the board. Movement is determined by rolling a dice and answering multiple-choice questions when required to do so.
History
Nubian Jak was created in 1994 by Jak Beula, a singer-songwriter and social worker with Islington Council. After working with some young people who seemed disaffected and marginalized by society, he decided to produce an "uplifting" board game that would look at positive role models of African heritage in Britain and Europe. He tried patenting the name "Union Black" but his application was denied due to there already being a game in existence that used the word "Union". Instead he combined the similar sounding words "Nubian" (meaning black) and "Jack" ("lift up" or "flag") to come up with the brand name "Nubian Jack". The use of the letter "C" in the word Jak was subsequently dropped.
On 16 November 1994, 1000 promotional copies of Nubian Jak European African-Centred Edition arrived at a small office in Clapham Junction, south London. A couple of weeks later the game was introduced to selected outlets in the capital, including Hamleys of London and Morleys Stores.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nubian Jak” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.