Afrikan Classical History

Biography of Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2011-12-08T22:40:00.001-05:00

Mukasa Afrika Ma’at holds a BA in Black Studies from Chicago State University and an MA in Inner City Studies Education and Leadership from Northeastern Illinois University where he studied at the Jacob H. Carruthers’ Center for Inner City Studies. His thesis was Pan-Africanism and the Back to Africa Movement in the 19th Century where he examined the historical development of the emigrant and nationalist movement that ultimately gave rise to the eminent Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the UNIA. During his studies at NEIU, Mukasa Afrika Ma’at had the honor of studying Mdw Ntr and the text of ancient Egypt (KMT) under Dr. Jacob Hudson Carruthers (Baba Jedi Shemsu Jehewty).
In 2002, Mukasa published the first edition of The Redemption of Afrikan Spirituality: An Afrikan-Centered Historical Critique of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The book addresses the Afrikan influence and origins of the world’s accepted religions, the religious justification for the enslavement of Afrikan people, and the development of an Afrikan spiritual worldview. The book is presently going to its fourth edition. He notes in the book that Afrikan Spirituality is prerequisite for true and total liberation of Afrikan people because no people can be free on the one hand and enslaved under the religions and cultures of other people on the other, he points out.
In 2007, he released Afrikan-Centered Sbayt: Education for Liberation, currently available in full text at www.mukasa.info. The book is a thorough source on Afrikan-Centered pedagogy and instruction in history, literature, math, and science. The book addresses instructional and historical approaches to teaching to the cultural orientation of Afrikan people. He notes, we have left our children to be educated by a system built for their failure. The book is meant for teacher and student, lay reader, parent, and child.
Brother Mukasa has two forthcoming publications, both with contents available online. Bleeding
for Unity will address the causes and solutions to genocidal wars in Africa due to resources, racism, religion, and politics. His autobiography, Life Against All Odds, is the story of growing up on the West and South Sides of Chicago into a dysfunctional family wrought with drug and alcohol abuse along with mental retardation. After heavy involvement with street gangs, crime, and drugs he chronicled his discovery into Afrikan history and culture as he explains how this discovery was life saving and inspirational. Through the pages of Afrikan history, he would find Afrikan Spirituality and begin his life’s mission.
Mukasa would work in the social service field before taking up his pursuits in the educational field. He would teach in Afrikan-Centered schools in Chicago and Philadelphia. He has worked to build Afrikan Rites of Passage programs, bring culture into the classroom, and promote culturally specific education. Currently, he is the Dean of Students at Kheper-Ra Charter School in Philadelphia and has supported other Afrikan-Centered schools in the area and around the country. Teachers from across the country have used his resources in the classroom.
More than an educator and an author, Mukasa is a community activist, promotes preventive health and fitness, and has lectured in cities throughout the United States on Afrikan history, culture, spirituality, and other topics. Brother Mukasa has founded and developed Ma’at-Sumu, an Afrikan Spiritual System based on a unique style of mixed “martial” arts / self defense / Female Self Defense and wholistic living. Ma’at-Sumu emphasizes physical stamina and cardio development, flexibility and breathing, healthy nutrition/vegetarianism, a dynamic defense system, and the wisdom of ancient Afrika. Dwa is the “yoga” type system of Ma’at-Sumu. Ma’at (meaning Universal Order in Mdw Ntr) and Sumu (meaning Venom in Ki-Swahili) combine to form this Afrikan way of life, protection, healing, and well-being.

Mukasa's wife became an ancestor in 2010. Of all of his accolades and accomplishments, Mukasa Ma’at is most proud of the fact that he is a great father to Mukasa Ma’at II.

Statue Dedicated to Haitian Independence and the Maroons

2011-07-28T11:46:00.000-04:00

General Jean Jacques Dessalines, 1804. "Live free or die!" Independence Speech

2011-07-28T11:38:00.000-04:00

Jean Jacques Dessalines, Emperor of Haiti

Jean Jacques Dessalines was born in 1758 a slave in
St Domingue now known as Haiti. Dessalines is known as
one of the founders of Haiti. He was first General to
Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was unable to read or write
and his body was scarred with strokes from the whip of
his black master. He ran away at about the age of 33
and joined the fight that started the French
revolution.
He was known as the tiger and was said to be a born
soldier. Many thought he excelled Toussaint as a
military genius, yet he only learned to sign his name
very late in his life. He had no sympathy with
Toussaint’s policy to reconcile with the whites. His
fearlessness and brutality struck fear in the hearts
of his foes.
In 1804 he crowned himself emperor for life.
Dessalines took out the white portion of the French
flag which was red, blue and white and kept only the
red and blue. The blue portion represented the blacks
and the red the mulattoes. Dessalines was killed in a
civil war between the mulattoes and blacks. He was
conspired against by his army and unexpectedly
arrested ; in a struggle to escape he received a
deadly blow.

One of the first acts of Dessalines was to encourage
the return of negroes and mulattoes from the United
States to Haiti. Although he was illiterate Dessalines
was considered a great orator of his time, below is a
speech by the great Emperor Jean Jacques Dessalines.
PROCLAMATION OF HAITI'S INDEPENDENCE BY THE GENERAL
IN CHIEF, Jean Jacques Dessalines to the Haitian
people in Gonaives, on January 1st 1804, year first of
Haiti's independence.

Translated from French into English by Noe Dorestant, E.E.
General Jean Jacques Dessalines, 1804. "Live free or die!"

Citizens,
It is not enough to have expelled from your country
the barbarians who have bloodied it for two centuries;
it is not enough to have put a brake to these ever
reviving factions which take turns to play-act this
liberty, like ghost that France had exposed before
your eyes; it is necessary, by a last act of national
authority, assure forever an empire of liberty in this
country our birth place; we must take away from this
inhumane government, which held for so long our
spirits in the most humiliating torpor, all hope to
resubjugate us; we must at last live independent or
die.
Independence or death... May these sacred words bring
us together, and may they be the signal of our
struggles and of our gathering.
Citizens, my compatriots, I have gathered in this
solemn day these courageous servicemen, who on the eve
of harvesting the last crotchets rest of liberty, have
given their blood to save it; these generals who led
your efforts against tyranny, have not yet done enough
for your well being...The french name still glooms our
countryside.
All is there to remind us of the atrocities of this
barbarian people: our laws, our customs, our cities,
all bear the french imprint; what do I say? There are
French in our island, and you believe yourself to be
free and independent of that republic which fought all
nations, it is true, but who has never been victorious
over those who wished to be free.
Well what! victims for over fourteen years of our own
credulity and our own indulgence; defeated, not by the
french armies, but by the shamefaced eloquence of the
proclamation of their agents; when will we get tired
of breathing the same air than them? Its cruelty
compared to our moderated patience; its color to our;
the vast seas that keep us apart, our avenging
climate, tell us enough that they are not our
brothers, and that they will never become and that, if
they find asylum amongst us, they will be once more
the schemers of our troubles and our divisions.
Indigenous citizens, men, women, girls and children,
bear your regards on all the parts of this island;
look for, yourself, your spouses, your husbands,
yourself, your brothers, you, your sisters; what do I
say? Look for your children, your children, those that
are being breast fed! What have they become?...I
tremble to say it... the prey of these vultures.
Instead of these interesting victims, your eye
dismayed can only perceive their assassins; may the
tigers that are still dripping their blood, and whose
horrible presence reproach your insensibility and your
slowness to avenge them. What are you waiting for to
appease their souls? Remember that you have wished
that your remains be buried near the remains of your
fathers, when you had chased away tyranny; would you
go down to your tomb without avenging them? No, their
skeleton would push away yours.
And you, precious men, intrepid generals, whose lack
of insensibility to your own misfortunes, have
resurrected liberty by giving it all your blood; you
should know that you have done nothing if you do not
give to the nations a terrible example, but just, of
the avenge that must exercise a proud people who have
recovered their liberty, and jealous to maintain it;
let us instill fear in all those whom would dare try
to take it away from us again; let us begin with the
French... May they tremble when they approach our
coasts, if not by the memory of the cruelty that they
have inflicted, at least by the terrible resolution
that we are about to take to devote to death, anyone
born french, who would dirty of his sacrilegious foot
the territory of liberty.
We dared to be free, let us dare to be so by ourselves
and for ourselves, let us emulate the growing child:
his own weight breaks the edge that has become useless
and hamper its walk. What nation has fought for us?
What nation would like to harvest the fruits of our
labors? And what dishonorable absurdity than to
vanquish and be slaves. Slaves! Leave it to the French
this qualifying epithet: they have vanquished to cease
to be free.
Let us walk on other footprints; let us imitate these
nations whom, carrying their solicitude until they
arrive on a prospect, and dreading to leave to
posterity the example of cowardliness, have preferred
to be exterminated rather than to be crossed out from
the number of free peoples.
Let us be on guard however so that the spirit of
proselytism does not destroy our work; let our
neighbors breath in peace, may they live in peace
under the empire of the laws that they have legislated
themselves, and let us not go, like spark fire
revolutionaries, erecting ourselves as legislators of
the Caribbean, to make good of our glory by troubling
the peace of neighboring islands: they have never,
like the one that we live in, been soaked of the
innocent blood of their inhabitants; they have no
vengeance to exercise against the authority that
protects them.
Fortunate to have never known the plagues which have
destroyed us, they can only make good wishes for our
prosperity. Peace to our neighbors! but anathema to
the french name! Eternal hate to France! That is our
cry.
Indigenous of Haiti, my fortunate destiny reserved me
to be one day the sentinel who had to watch guard the
idol to which you are making your sacrifice, I have
watched, fought, sometimes alone, and, If I have been
fortunate to deliver in your hands the sacred trust
that you had under my care, remember that it is up to
you now to conserve it. Before you consolidate it by
laws which assure your individual liberty, your
leaders, which I assemble here, and myself, we owe you
the last proof of our devotion.
Generals, and you, leaders, reunited here near me for
the well being of our country, the day has come, this
day which must make eternal our glory, our
independence.
If there could exist amongst you a half-hearted, may
he distance himself and tremble to pronounce the oath
that must unite us.
Let us swear to the entire universe, to posterity, to
ourselves, to renounce forever to France, and to die
rather than to live under its domination.
To fight until the last crotchet rest for the
independence of our country!

And you, people for too long misfortuned, witness to
the oath that we are pronouncing, remind yourself that
it is on your perseverance and your courage that I
depended on when I threw myself in this career for
liberty in order to fight against despotism and
tyranny against which you struggled since fourteen
years. Remind yourself that I sacrificed myself to
jump to your defense, parents, children, fortune, and
that now I am only rich of your liberty; that my name
has become in horror to all nations who wish for
slavery, and that the despots and tyrants do not
pronounce it only while cursing the day that saw me
born; and if for whatever reason you refused or
received while murmuring the laws that the genius
which watch over your destiny will dictate me for your
good fortune, you would deserve the fate of ungrateful
peoples.
But away from me this horrible idea. You will be the
support of the liberty that you cherish, the support
to the chief which command you.
Take then in your hands this oath to live free and
independent, and to prefer death to all those who
would love to put you back under the yoke.
Swear at last to pursue forever the traitors and the
enemies of your independence.
Done at the general headquarter of Gonaives, this
January 1st 1804, the first year of Independence.
Words of General in Chief: Jean Jacques Dessalines,
hero of the Haitian war of Independence.
Emperor Jean Jacques Dessalines, Father of Haitian
Independence, 1804.

Translated from French into English by: Noe Dorestant,
October 17, 1999, year 195 of Haiti's Independence as
part of his contribution and civic duty to bring
people awareness of Haitian history and its not so
distant glorious past. All rights reserved 1999.

Arthur Alfonso Schomburg

2011-06-07T16:24:00.000-04:00

Arthur Alfonso Schomburg

http://www.africawithin.com/bios/arthur_schomburg.htm

1874-1938

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nationality
American

Occupation
Curator, Writer

Introduction

The work of Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, a distinguished black bibliophile, is a tribute to the world of scholarship and is preserved in one of the world's largest repositories of materials for the study of peoples of African descent--the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. A self-taught historian with a remarkable memory, he worked to inspire racial pride both through his organizations and through the encouragement of study and research on black themes.
Narrative Essay

Schomburg was born on January 24, 1874, to Carlos Federico Schomburg, a German-born merchant, and Mary Joseph, a black midwife and washer woman. On January 28 of that year, young Schomburg was baptized Arturo Alfonso. Although the story of his birth and early childhood is often conflicting and mysterious, Schomburg chose not to clear up many of the mysteries. According to his biographer, Eleanor Des Verney Sinnette, he knew little about his father. He identified his mother as born free in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, in 1837; she was educated at the elementary level and later became a midwife. He had one sister, Dolores Maria, known as "Lola," who was born in San Juan and was 14 years older than he. Both maternal grandparents were born free in St. Croix.
Although the only primary schools available to him in San Juan charged tuition, Schomburg may have attended, but did not complete his work at the Instituto de Parvulos, a Jesuit school. Schomburg also claimed to have attended the Institute of Popular Teaching, or Institute of Instruction in San Juan. There are also statements that he was completely self-educated.
During his childhood, Mary Joseph either remained in San Juan and sent Arturo to the Virgin Islands to live with her parents to attend school, or she moved to the Virgin Islands with him. In either case, he had friends in St. Croix and St. Thomas, joined a debating team there, and according to his biographer, Schomburg claims, without documentation, that he attended St. Thomas College.
Schomburg was preoccupied with his own heritage and is said to have become curious about his past through a literary club in Puerto Rico, where history was a favorite topic of discussion. When whites spoke of the accomplishments of their Spanish ancestors, he became curious about his own ancestors and about people of color in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture was one of his early heroes. He began to read widely in areas of his interest, both in Spanish and English, and developed a lifelong interest in Caribbean and Latin American history.
By adolescence, Schomburg was described in his biography as "somewhat self-effacing, soft-spoken ... of medium height with a cafe au lait complexion, soft curly brown hair, and rather large, limpid, warm brown eyes." While Schomburg was in the Virgin Islands, he became more curious about Puerto Rico's and Cuba's struggle for independence than his own heritage. He knew that he needed to leave the islands to become educated, and he had considered either a career in medicine or a place in the revolution. He may have returned to San Juan to work as a printer to earn money to travel north. Aged 17, Schomburg left the Caribbean for New York City, arriving on Friday, April 17, 1891, with letters of introduction to cigar makers in Manhattan verifying his experience as a typographer. He settled on the lower east side of Manhattan.
To sustain himself while attending night school at Manhattan Central High School, Schomburg held various jobs--elevator operator, bellhop, printer, and porter. He sustained his interest in the Puerto Rican struggle for independence and on April 3, 1892, when he was 18-years old, he became a founding member and secretary of a political club, Las Dos Antillas (The Two Islands), that assisted in Cuba's and Puerto Rico's independence. His last major involvement in the movement came on August 2, 1898, when a meeting was held in which the revolutionary support groups disbanded. His interest later shifted from the Cuban and Puerto Rican movement to the freedom of people of color everywhere. Later, however, he severed his ties with the Puerto Rican community and from then on lived as a black man, or "a Puerto Rican of African descent," as he became known.
Schomburg became active in fraternal organizations, first in freemasonry through El Sol de Cuba Lodge, No. 38, founded by Cuban and Puerto Rican exiles. By 1911 he was elected master; later the organization was renamed the Prince Hall Lodge to honor Prince Hall of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first black accredited Mason. While serving as master, Schomburg gathered and organized the Masons' documents, papers, books, pamphlets, correspondence, photographs, and other items, and was largely responsible for preserving the black lodge's early history. From 1918 to 1926 he was grand secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York and in 1925 became a Thirty-third Degree Mason.
For a while Schomburg may have considered becoming a lawyer. From 1901 to 1906 he worked with the New York law firm Pryor, Mellis & Harris and, according to his biographer, led others to believe that he was studying toward a degree from the firm by "reading law." After he was denied permission to take the New York State Regents examination to qualify for a "law certificate," he left the clerk-messenger position and became messenger for the Latin American department of Bankers Trust Company in lower Manhattan. He rose in rank to become supervisor of the mailing department before retiring in 1929 on a medical disability.
Collects Black Materials

Schomburg's interest in collecting evidences of black history became apparent in 1911, when he began to collect rigorously and systematically. He had met John Edward Bruce (Bruce Grit), journalist, lay historian, and bibliophile, and joined the Men's Sunday Club that Bruce founded. The club meetings usually included some discussion of racial issues as well as books, and the members raised funds to purchase items on black history for the club's library. In April of that year, Schomburg and Bruce co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research, which would greatly influence black book collecting and preservation as well as the study of African American themes. In 1914 Schomburg became a member of the American Negro Academy (ANA), founded in 1897 by Alexander Crummell, where he met such black scholars as W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Kelly Miller, and Carter G. Woodson. This affiliation furthered Schomburg's interest in collecting black materials. In 1922 he was elected fifth president of the ANA. Since the ANA was based in Washington, D.C., Schomburg was primarily an absentee president; his friend John W. Cromwell attended the executive committee meetings and provided direct supervision of the organization until he died in 1927. In time, Schomburg became unhappy with the ANA, lost his enthusiasm for the weakening organization, and received little comfort for his efforts. He held the office until the ANA dissolved in 1929.
Schomburg was in New York when the Harlem Renaissance was at its peak. If he had not known them already, he came in contact with such luminaries as Claude McKay (who became his closest friend), Walter White, and James Weldon Johnson. He had great respect for Marcus Garvey and supported many of Garvey's principles of black development. The Harlem Renaissance period provided fertile ground for Schomburg to promote his interest in black themes and stimulated further his interest in collecting black books. The rigor with which Schomburg collected was manifest in the sizeable collection that he gathered. He sought out materials from booksellers throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Latin America. By 1925 he had acquired 5,000 books, pamphlets, manuscripts, prints, etchings, and other items. When the New York Public Library opened the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints at the 135th Street Branch in May that year, he sold his collection for $10,000 to the Carnegie Corporation to be placed in the new library. His collecting practices continued. He sailed for Europe on June 25, 1925, in search of missing pieces of black history to strengthen his collection now at the library.
Schomburg's close relationship with Charles Spurgeon Johnson, who had headed the Department of Research and Investigations for the National Urban League and edited the league's official journal, Opportunity, and by 1928 chaired the Social Science Department at Fisk University, led to Schomburg's position in 1929 as curator of the Negro Collection in the university library. During his brief tenure at Fisk, Schomburg established a distinguished collection similar to his own, then left in 1932 to become curator of the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints at the New York Public Library (renamed in 1973 the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). Continuing to travel extensively, he spoke at conferences and before other groups to solicit materials for the collection. The same meticulous care was used in developing the collection that he used in building his private library, and was instrumental in building an impressive collection of rare and current books and materials for the library that he now served. Schomburg sought support for the collection wherever he could, using friends such as Langston Hughes to locate materials during Hughes's travels, and persuading black writers, composers, artists, and others to contribute works. He also built a network of people who led him to materials in this country or abroad, or purchased them in his stead. Schomburg did what he could to persuade the library system to purchase items for the collection, and when the library refused to pay for materials he had ordered improperly, he often paid for the works himself. He also organized two notable exhibitions--one on the achievements of blacks, and a traveling exhibition of African art and handicrafts.
Writes on Black Themes

Schomburg's interest in the black experience was expressed also in his writings. Although he had little formal training and clearly was not a good writer, influential black intelligentsia respected his potential for enhancing scholarship. Such scholars as W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and Alain Locke edited his works carefully to make them more readable. Schomburg also promoted the study and research on black themes in the nation's black colleges, as seen in his essay "Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in Our Schools, Colleges, etc.," published in 1913 in Nancy Cunard's work, Negro. His publications also included such works as "A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry" (1916) and "Economic Contribution by the Negro to America," published in 1916 as an occasional paper of the American Negro Academy. He also published articles in Crisis, Opportunity, the Messenger, Negro World, Negro Digest, the A.M.E. Review, New Century, and Survey Graphic.
Once highly visible through 30 organizations to which he belonged, his memberships included the Urban League, the NAACP, and the Negro Writers' Guild. In time Schomburg became disenchanted with black organizations--often because of a dispute--and resigned. He became annoyed with the black intelligentsia as well, sometimes because of trivial matters, sometimes because he felt overlooked, or merely due to dissatisfaction with another person's point of view. In time he removed himself from the limelight.
On June 30, 1895, Schomburg married Elizabeth "Bessie" Hatcher, a fair-skinned beauty from Staunton, Virginia, and they lived in the San Juan Hill section of New York. They had three sons, Maximo Gomez, Arthur Alfonso Jr., and Kingsley Guarionex. After Bessie Schomburg died in 1900, he married Elizabeth Morrow Taylor on March 17, 1902, a native of Williamsburg, North Carolina. She died early, leaving two young sons, Reginald Stanfield and Nathaniel Jose. All of his children lived with their respective maternal relatives--Bessie's in Virginia and Tennessee, and Elizabeth's in Virginia and New Jersey. About 1914 Schomburg took a third wife, Elizabeth Green, a nurse and friend of Bessie Schomburg's sister, and they had three children--Fernando, his only daughter, Dolores Marie, and Placido Carlos.
Schomburg, who was of medium build, had remarkable energy and determination. His health began to fail in late 1936, and his pace was slowed. As late as 1938, Schomburg expected to continue his speaking engagements and attend meetings. He developed a dental infection, however, that required extraction. After that he became ill, failed to respond to treatment, and on June 10, 1938, died at Brooklyn's Madison Park Hospital. After a private funeral held on June 12 at Brooklyn's Siloam Presbyterian Church, Schomburg was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Charles Spurgeon Johnson's tribute to Schomburg at a memorial service held on June 8, 1939, serves as a summary of his work. He called the Schomburg Collection a "visible monument to the life's work of Arthur Schomburg. It stands for itself, quietly and solidly for all time, a rich and inexhaustible treasure store for scholars and laymen alike, the materialization of the foresight, industry and scholarship" of Schomburg.
Sources

Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 9. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.

Johnson, Charles Spurgeon. "Arthur A. Schomburg." The Speeches of Charles Spurgeon Johnson. Vol. 6. Unpublished. Nashville, Fisk University Library, February 1959.
Logan, Raymond W., and Michael R. Winston, eds. Dictionary of American Negro Biography. New York: Norton, 1982.
Moss, Alfred A., Jr. The American Negro Academy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
"Notes." Journal of Negro History 23 (July 1938): 392--408.
Sinnette, Eleanor Des Verney. Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: Black Bibliophile and Collector. Detroit: The New York Public Library and Wayne State University Press, 1989.
--, W. Paul Coates, and Thomas C. Battle, eds. Black Bibliophiles and Collectors. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1990.
Collections

Schomburg's personal papers and private library are in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City. Additional materials are scattered and are in the possession of the Schomburg family; others are included in the Thomas Elsa Jones Papers and the Charles S. Johnson Collection, Fisk University Library; the Arthur Schomburg Papers, the John Edward Bruce Collection, and the John Wesley Cromwell Collection in the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University; the James Weldon Johnson Collection and the Claude McKay Papers at Yale University; the Henry P. Slaughter Collection, the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, and elsewhere.

Malcolm X on Black Nationalism and Afrikan Identity

2011-05-21T12:16:00.000-04:00

Malcolm X, "I Have No Fear Whatsoever of Anybody of Anything"!

2011-05-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

A Great and Mighty Walk on the Life and Teachings of Baba John Henrik Clarke (Narrated by Wesley Snipes)

2011-05-21T11:17:00.003-04:00

A Great and Mighty Walk on the Life and Teachings of Ancestor Baba John Henrik Clarke
(Narrated by Wesley Snipes)

Click on Photo

Poetry Marathon: Honoring Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka

2011-04-25T13:06:00.000-04:00

BLACK WRITERS MUSEUM
Presents a
“CELEBRATION OF BLACK POETRY”
Honoring
Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka

With the “Living Legends of Poetry” Award
Poetry Marathon – 12 Hours of Nonstop Poetry

11:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m.

Poets From All Over
All on One Stage, All on One Day
Students ∙ Seniors ∙ Unpublished ∙ Professional
Come & Shop @ the African Marketplace
Vendors with Everything!
Enjoy Poetry, Jazz, Food, Clothing, Jewelry, Black Art
and much more…
When: Saturday, April 30, 2011
Time: 11:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.
Admission: $6, youth under 12 FREE
Where: Real Estate Auction Center 5549 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19144
To Register as a featured Poet, Call: 267.297.3078
REGISTER NOW!
An Entire Family Event!

Maulana Karenga - To Be An Agent or Not to Be An Agent, That is the Question?

2011-04-22T14:28:00.000-04:00

Subject: [BRC-ALL] Ron (Maulana) Karenga
Sender: worker-brc-all@lists.tao.ca
Precedence: bulk
To: brc-all@lists.tao.ca
X-WWW-Site: http://www.blackradicalcongress.org/

Dialog from the Black Radical Congress list,

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:26:03 -0400
Message-Id: <199910191426.KAA26788@lists.tao.ca>
From: "Lorenzo Ervin"

[Moderator: response to an article on BRC-NEWS]

Here is something to think about: If 30 years after WW2, a Nazi came along and tried to convince us that he now works at a Jewish community center with kids, should we now forgive his previous crimes? So now Karenga and US are "champions of the working class with a living wage campaign in Los Angeles?"

There are those in the contemporary Black nationalist movements who will do anything to rehabilitate this guy despite his crimes against the people. Farrakhan had him as a speaker at the Million Man March in 1995, and he has been giving talks on college campuses with his Kawaida cultural nationalist mumbo-jumbo. Like neo-Nazi holocaust revinionsists, there are those who claim there is no "proof" that Karenga or US had anything to do with the shootings and killings of 5 members of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles and San Diego, that he is not/was never a police informer and provocateur, and that he should now be rehabilitated in this period. He himself says now that the Black Panther members in L.A., Jon Huggins and Bunchy Carter, who were murdered by US thugs on the UCLA campus in 1968 "egged the whole thing on and got what they deserve", and other Black nationalists have said some nonsense like "they were fighting over a woman", rather than that the FBI initiated all this and they were willing tools.

This points to how corrupt the contemporary movement really is, Karenga and the US helped to destroy the Black revolutionary movement of the 1960's, and no good works in this period will erase that, especially since no one ever paid for these murders and counter-revolutionary acts. We can't be weak on things like this for some perceived short term gain. These are my personal opinions, not those of a group.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 00:58:43 -0400
Message-Id: <199910200458.AAA29209@lists.tao.ca>
From: "Imani, Nikitah Okembe-Ra"

> This points to how corrupt the contemporary movement really is, Karenga
> and the US helped to destroy the Black revolutionary movement of the
> 1960's, and no good works in this period will erase that, especially since
> no one ever paid for these murders and counter-revolutionary acts. We
> can't be weak on things like this for some perceived short term gain.
> These are my personal opinions, not those of a group.
>
> Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Hotep. We forgive our enemies easily. If we can find it in our hearts and conscience to sit down with those who enslaved our humanity and to particpate in its denigration even today, wy can we not find it in those same hearts and consciences to see change in our brothers and sisters? I believe the errors of the ways must be acknowledged and recompense made, however, I must speak for forgiveness in the wilderness of a misled and shattered people. Few of us have the lofty credentials to meet the test put forth popularly by the one called Jesus who said that the one who was without blemish should render the judgement and punishment.

Barakha Hotep.

Imani, Nikitah Okembe-Ra
imanino@jmu.edu

Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:35:32 -0400
Message-Id: <199910201935.PAA31522@lists.tao.ca>
From: Bill Fletcher

I am coming in very late on this discussion and do not quite understand the context, but I do wish to raise one thing.

As someone who had serious political differences with Karenga in the 60s I would advise caution in terms of how those differences get handled now. I am reminded of stories from El Salvador of the sort of factional wars which went on among various groups which ultimately had to be put aside in order to build the FMLN.

Don't get me wrong. I am not ignoring differences. But it is also the case that unity of action can be found, including with those with who we have disagreed. We must always keep in mind the way in which the US government via COINTELPRO exploited differences within the Left generally, and the African-American movement in particular.

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 17:52:11 -0400
Message-Id: <199910202152.RAA11035@lists.tao.ca>
From: BobCumns@aol.com

Thanks very much Bill Fletcher for bringing the gravity of history to what can easily become another energy-dissapating and focus-destroying development. Time is simply too important and collective efforts too limited for us to return AGAIN to fratricide, whether oral or otherwise.

To coin a phrase, we have "been there, and done that."

Bob Cummings

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 01:48:16 -0400
Message-Id: <199910210548.BAA16784@lists.tao.ca>
From: AlAdisa@aol.com

Brothers and Sisters,

My first response to the postings received. I would wish to know how many of you are old enough to remember the allegations against US from the 60's. In addition, I would love to understand how the 60's relate the issues of today?

Brother Karenga explained his position(s) in Detroit, approximately 4 years ago to numerous activists. He was challenged on the same issues that have been raised by the post that I'm responding to. Most here understood and moved to the next level. Does that exonerate the brother? It was never proved that Cointel was not the agent that planted the stories. Yes, in Detroit, the brother was exonerated. His explanations and analysis were accepted, by scholars, historians and activists. We still know that he was a cultural nationalist, and still espouses the same. Continuity is a point we must examine.

A question still remains about recent posts. Why is the brother being attacked about actions during the 60's? Is it because we just learned about certain allegations, or have we obtained facts? I must state that Karenga's analysis on several subjects have been scholarly and right on target. Detroit has enacted a "Living Wage" ordinance, over the objections of a Black mayor! I must state, without the discussion or entailed psuedo-intellectual analysis of a need or intent.

The dialogue continues.

A Brother in Struggle Aziz

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:09:41 -0400
Message-Id: <199910220309.XAA08420@lists.tao.ca>
From: Ifama Jackson

Hotep Brotha,

I think in the case of Ron Karenga, it is a leopard can't change his spots. It is a matter of trust. During a time when the African community was at it's strongest phase for fighting for self-determination, you have folks like Ron Karenga, a government spy, screwing things up. I heard him do an interview on a radio program with Steve Cokely once (got it on tape) and a brother called in to ask him why he got a crowd of people all stirred up and then was whisked away in a police car (not under arrest, I might add), well, the scholarly Ron Karenga you have described here was not the one that replied on the radio. He started talking about this Brotha's mama and everything, never intelligently addressed the allocation. I have no respect for this man.

Ifama

AlAdisa@aol.com wrote:

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:09:40 -0400
Message-Id: <199910220309.XAA08416@lists.tao.ca>
From: "Terrance Thomas"

I would argue that the issuses about Karrenga are well founded, and best defined by the Nazi Soldier parable that was offered. We all know that COINTELPRO had their hand in all events the pertained to the 60's and might have been the true cause behind the friction. I think the question these scholars and activists are asking is "Was he a willing player?" In my view (which I came to having met man at our conference in Chicago and by some of his statments then), it is easy for us to say "Hell yes he was willing." Too say activsts and scholars in Detriot has forgiven him does not mean that other activists and scholars elsewhere has....I honestly believe in my heart that " a leopard does not change his spots" even thirty years later.

Terrance Thomas

Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 00:09:28 -0400
Message-Id: <199910240409.AAA02910@lists.tao.ca>
From: GMANADRA@aol.com

I would hope that we would all refrain from rewriting history to suit our rhetoric. I would be the first to agree that Karenga committed crimes against the people. And yes, it was members of the LA arm of US who were involved in the shootings of Black Panther members at UCLA. However, all members of US were not willing dupes of the FBI, nor was US the only organization at the time which was infiltrated by police agents and informants. To say that US singlehandedly is responsible for the demise of the Black Power movement is to give Karenga much more credit than he deserves. Finally, there were people who went to jail, and or, into hiding for many years as a result of the shootings at UCLA. They and there families paid a heavy price. Karenga also spent time in jail though for other offenses.

Are we going to continue to let the FBI and counterintelligence programs drive wedges between us? I do not agree with everything that Ron Karenga says or does, now or in the past. But there are plenty of black folks that I don't agree with. That does not equate them with Nazis. That does not mean that we have to disregard someone's sincere efforts to contribute to meaningful change in our community.

Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 06:13:19 -0400
Message-Id: <199910241013.GAA21706@lists.tao.ca>
From: Sister Somayah

>Don't get me wrong. I am not ignoring differences. But it is also the
>case that unity of action can be found, including with those with who we
>have disagreed. We must always keep in mind the way in which the US
>government via COINTELPRO exploited differences within the Left generally,
>and the African-American movement in particular.
>
>Bill Fletcher, Jr.

The directives given by the ancestors speak through us all. The manipulation by the enemy IS and was real. Operational Unity was hampered by many factors, not the least of which was the loss of Malcolm as an advisor; to a lessor degree the loss of King due to his early willingness to make deals with white folks. This is painfully evident as it is captured in the "Eyes on the Prize" series that captures Martin and Kwame Toure arguing over a difference in tactics. Martin was in control, but he was fearful of the effects the tactics urged by Kwame would get out of hand. This incident was shot during the Selma to Montgomery March. It demonstrates the extreme differences that existed within the movemment. Martin had been cultivated by white Powerful people in meetings that Kwame was kept out of or never knew about. In these meetings deals were made where he (Martin) was urged to contain the "radical" element. In exchange for that he was assured money, exposure and projection, and the promise of urging the authorship of statues that would dismantle discriminatory laws and practices. Karenga, is an interesting study because of the things that he is alleged to have done. Despite the whole 'Co In Tel Pro...connection with Karenga...i agree about coming to our own independent conclusion that he was indeed a willing participating lover of the enemy of our people!!!

Karenga's presence has caused many of Los Angeles' conscious people to not have any thing to do with Kwanzaa...were it not for my brother Akile's Kwanzaa Gwaride Festival in Leimert Park I would not want anything to do with Kwanzaa. He has made a pact with the Black Liberation Army....my brother has shown that Karenga was just the vehicle through which a message was supposed to spread amongst our people. It just so happens that the message came through the same time that other messages were being given by many others of our people. Also we have to see beyond the messenger and focus upon the message itself....my brother Akile, quotes Dr. Alfred Ligon of the Aquarian Spiritual Center: April 29th, 1992 Uranus and Neptune were conjoined within one degree. Astrologers of old have known that no one knew the Age of Aquarius would begin but that it would happen when the outer planets in our solar system were conjoined. Kwanzaa has a harbinger of the Age shift from Pisces to Aquarius. Aquarius, or in Yoruba parlance Shango (Sango) is the Champion of Justice; also termed "High John the Conqueror" the great hero for justice during our chattel slave experience/Colors red and white/ number 6. So prevalent was the issue of Justice on that day that my brother refers to the date on his Kwanzaa Kalenda as the "No Justice No Peace Rebellion" the signature event that launched the Age of Shango. Kwnzaa is "Sango'esque" in that it was a clarion call for us to look at our beginnings. Anza, the root of the word Kwanzaa means beginning or start. Utilized in martial classes taught by movement self defense masters as the command to "Begin!" That (Anza) is the beginning of the Kwanzaa Holidays according to my brother because Anza is the name of the Winter Solstice Celebration.

Literally Kwanzaa was and IS urging us to look to our own beginnings. The desire to surface could not be suppressed. Even the lighting of the Black or (as my brother says DuDu?double black) Candle is actually a candle lit for Asaru/Osirius who according to the late Dr. Chek' Anta Diop whose date of worship was as late as the5th Century CE was Dec. 26th. According to Ivan Van Sertima "Asaru" was also named the Lord of the Perfect Black. My brother contends that that name is presently spoken of by the Yoruba and the Benin people of Nigeria as their sacred ancester - Odudua which would translate as Perfect Black/Great Black. Odudua was the name adoped by the Nationalist camp as the Ancestral energy of the Black race. Olokun is the Orisha of the Black race. You see Kwanzaa when we look beyond Karenga brings in quite an additional amount of information.

We cannot let our anger for Karenga and the choices he made stop our collective growth. The show will go one....stopping for no one. We will sort out the people and the pieces and move forward. Operational unity will come from us working together. How we handle the issue of our future is beyond Karenga. He was wise enough to see the future to some extent. This is evident by his recent publishing of the book: "Odu Ifa" In reality, again according to my brother, Karenga during the late sixties Black Power Conferences opposed the now Oba of Oyotunji Village (SC) as they competed for the position of Minister of Culture as expressed at the beginning of the Republic of New Africa. The Yoruba prevailed over the Kawaidists. Karenga's recent sojourn into Ifa would indicate that there is something in the Yoruba connection that cannot be overlooked. Just as he wrote something on Kmt posturing a degree of authority over that subject, he expressing authority over Ifa, the ancient book of Tcheuti. The Hemp movement is a perfect example of how we as a people are fearful of expressing our feelings. Many of us utilize hemp in our personal lives yet we don't respect our selves enough to go out and get letters from doctors so that we can bypass these folks hemp prohibition laws....'BACK THAT ASS UP!!'

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:40:43 -0400
Message-Id: <199910252040.QAA10032@lists.tao.ca>
From: Lorenzo Ervin

Hello Bill and everyone:

I am out of the country and frankly started not to revisit this issue, but will just say this: The rationale about unity in action may be a good one if this were just a question of competing ideas alone, (say about Living wages, but I/we support those campaigns wherever they are) or honest differences among political forces, but that is not what I/we have been talking about at all. Ron Karenga is an outright traitor and killer, and US was a tool of the FBI/LAPD, simple as that. Five black Panthers were killed, 2 at UCLA, but three others in San Diego, and he worked along with other traitors to defeat the Black revolution of the 1960's. What does that have to do with now? First, principles among revolutinary organizers and also the distinct possibility that he/US will do the same in this period.

But let's cut to the chase: I frankly believe that many folks who come down in favor of "rehabilitating" Karenga are people who just disagree with the revolutionary legacy of the Black Panther Party and are down with US as both a past and present political movement, or have some weak ideal about Black/class Unity. This is the kind of *soft Leftism* that exists in this period, so liberal that even counter-revolutionaries are given credence and organizational support without in anyway answering for their crimes.

IMHO, such unity is not possible with class or race enemies. I/we will not work with Karenga, Cotton Smith, Butler (the snitch in Geronimo Pratt's case), or any other turncoat Panther/police infiltrator regardless of his current role or campaign he is involved in. In truth, I feel that revolutionary justice should have been served upon him (Karenga) long ago, and then this discussion would be totally moot. That's all I have to say. I appreciate everyone's views, but it does not change my mind at all.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:15:22 -0400
Message-Id: <199910252115.RAA14449@lists.tao.ca>
From: John Woodford

> IMHO, such unity is not possible with class or race enemies. I/we will not
> work with Karenga, Cotton Smith, Butler (the snitch in Geronimo Pratt's
> case), or any other turncoat Panther/police infiltrator regardless of his
> current role or campaign he is involved in. In truth, I feel that
> revolutionary justice should have been served upon him (Karenga) long ago,
> and then this discussion would be totally moot. That's all I have to say.
> I appreciate everyone's views, but it does not change my mind at all.
>
> Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

The best revolutionary justice in such a case is ostracism and vigilance, and especially vigilance that alerts us to the kind of ideology and tactics US and its strategists used to befuddle minds (extremist rap coupled with mystical racist mumbo jumbo, for one thing).

John Woodford

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:21:36 -0400
Message-Id: <199910252121.RAA15321@lists.tao.ca>
From: Bill Fletcher

I have become concerned about the tone and tenor of this discussion. I think that it is both irresponsible and outright wrong to engage in a written discussion about meeting out 'revolutionary justice.'

The issue for us is that there are forces with who we have VERY serious political differences. In some cases, those differences have been violent.

We must judge, on the basis of what people are doing now, what their base is, what THEIR summation of their own history is, etc., how, when and where we can work together at all.

There is certainly a serious historical discussion which can and should take place about a variety of events which took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I just keep coming back to the manner in which the forces of evil utilized contradictions within our movement to encourage various interpretations of 'revolutionary justice'. This went to obscene lengths, leading to various kinds of purges, physical torture, etc.

As I said earlier, I believe that we are obligated to proceed VERY carefully given the history of disruptions with which we have had to deal.

The principles of unity of the BRC set credible lines of demarcation, despite how broad they are. There are forces we may work with who will NEVER be able to operate within the BRC because they have fundamental disagreements with us and we with them. But that does not stop working together.

I suggest caution with words; rigor in our analysis; principle in values; and flexibility in the united front.

In unity,

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 03:15:39 -0400
Message-Id: <199910270715.DAA12878@lists.tao.ca>
From: "John A. Imani"

In a message dated 99-10-25 17:36:45 EDT, Bill Fletcher wrote:

>The principles of unity of the BRC set credible lines of demarcation,
>despite how broad they are. There are forces we may work with who will
>NEVER be able to operate within the BRC because they have fundamental
>disagreements with us and we with them. But that does not stop working
>together.

In the late 60's and early 70's I was a member of the Black Student Union at Los Angeles City College. In our BSU there were Panthers, US Organization members, Muslims, et al. As I remember, I was the only internationalist communist on the central committee. As such, theoretically, I was closest to the Black Panther Party. My closeness to the party trancended mere ideological similarity. My closest cousin was a member of the party and my upatairs neighbor, Julio Butler (yes, that Julio Butler), recruited me to teach political education to Sec 3-A of the party located on Adams Blvd. A highly placed well known member of the party gave my brother a .38 to protect me in my work at LACC. I say all that to say this:

In the BSU Central Committee, consisting of some 12 or 13 members, I as minister of political affairs, often found myself outvoted (esp. as regards working with 'white folks'.) That was fine with me. That was the temper of the times. Didn't bother me for, when outvoted in committee, I would take my position to the general body and often as not I would find that the overwhelming majority would agree with the position that if we are going to close down the school, fight the police, defy the powers that be, then if there were 'white folks who would take the a*s whippings and kick some too then hey! they are comrades too. Amongst those members who sided with this position were two brothers, Rafiki and Sikivu, who were rocks. These two were members of the US Organization.

Panther or US. Despite the shootings at UCLA, Carver Jr High, wherever. At LACC, we were beyond that. Why, you ask? Because we had a job to do. And we did it. We conducted strikes. Strikes so bold that Nixon went on television talking about our 'arrogance'. Yeah, well f*ck him with his dead a*s. The point is this: Leadership whenever it sets itself up as being that (Yeah, I'm talking about Karenga) is often, most times, nay always corrupt. But the foot soldiers, the workers, the people, the humans are always capable of humanity. As with yesteryear so with tomorrow. There are those who tell me that my friend, my brother and my comrade Mpinduzi of the US Organization is but a stooge of Karenga. That he has to report before he can arrive at a decision. That it is the Maulana who is speaking when he gives voice to his words. If, indeed, that is so then perhaps it is a different Karenga who is speaking. For I hear a voice that is concerned about the state of the wretched of this earth. A voice echoing of a past when Sikivu and Rafiki stood unwavering.

I cannot forget the transgressions of the past but perhaps I understand them better. For the US Organization was not only the attackers but were attacked, villified and demeaned by those who were attacked, villified and demeaned. We made so many mistakes back then. Are we condemned to repeat them?

Best,

John Imani
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 04:45:49 -0400
Message-Id: <199910280845.EAA11903@lists.tao.ca>
From: Bill Fletcher

I have had a series of concerns about this particular debate, i.e., about Karenga. i have been concerned about the tone and some of the language, as well as context.

The question we must ask now, is something like, what is at stake in this debate? As far as i know no one is asking to recruit Karenga, and the last time i checked, he did not put in an application to join. Understanding what happened in the late 60s and early 70s is far more complex than a focus on one person. There was certainly the role of COINTELPRO in many organizations, cultural nationalist, revolutionary nationalist, internationalist, helping to destroy from within. Yet, i would argue that they could not have been as successful as they were had there not been unhealthy conditions in so many of our organizations. i am talking about rampant sexism; dogmatism; hero-worship; reluctance or hostility toward criticism and self-criticism; sectarianism...the list could go on and on. The agents of evil were able to operate in that environment the way that flies nest in manure. i believe that we should be focusing our attention much more on those issues.

As with any movement for liberation, we will have to contend with a variety of political tendencies. Even where the trust level is low or virtually non-existant, we will need to determine whether the social base of a specific political force necessitates that we collaborate, irrespective of our personal feelings or political analysis. This was a point of view rarely understood by many forces on the Left within the African-American movement in the late 60s, and on into the 70s and 80s.

i am hoping that we get it right this go round.

In unity,

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

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THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER

2011-04-08T17:06:00.001-04:00

THE

CONFESSIONS

OF

NAT TURNER,

THE LEADER OF THE LATE

INSURRECTIONS IN SOUTHAMPTON, VA.

As fully and voluntarily made to

THOMAS R. GRAY,

In the prison where he was confined, and acknowledged by him to be such when read before the Court of Southampton; with the certificate, under seal of the Court convened at Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 1831, for his trial.

ALSO, AN AUTHENTIC

ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE INSURRECTION,

WITH LISTS OF THE WHITES WHO WERE MURDERED,

AND OF THE NEGROES BROUGHT BEFORE THE COURT OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND THERE SENTENCED, &c.
Baltimore:

PUBLISHED BY THOMAS R. GRAY.

Lucas & Denver, print.

1831

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, TO WIT:

Be it remembered, That on this tenth day of November, Anno Domini, eighteen hundred and thirty-one, Thomas R. Gray of the said District, deposited in this office the title of a book, which is in the words as following:

"The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray, in the prison where he was confined, and acknowledged by him to be such when read before the Court of Southampton; with the certificate, under seal, of the Court convened at Jerusalem, November 5, 1831, for his trial. Also, an authentic account of the whole insurrection, with lists of the whites who were murdered, and of the negroes brought before the Court of Southampton, and there sentenced, &c" the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in conformity with an Act of Congress, entitled "An act to amend the several acts respecting Copy Rights."

Edmund J. Lee, Clerk of the District.

In testimony that the above is a true copy,

from the record of the District Court for

(Seal.) the District of Columbia, I, Edmund J.

Lee, the Clerk thereof, have hereunto

set my hand and affixed the seal of my

office, this 10th day of November, 1831.

Edmund J. Lee, C.D.C.

TO THE PUBLIC.

The late insurrection in Southampton has greatly excited the public mind, and led to a thousand idle, exaggerated and mischievous reports. It is the first instance in our history of an open rebellion of the slaves, and attended with such atrocious circumstances of cruelty and destruction, as could not fail to leave a deep impression, not only upon the minds of the community where this fearful tragedy was wrought, but throughout every portion of our country, in which this population is to be found. Public curiosity has been on the stretch to understand the origin and progress of this dreadful conspiracy, and the motives which influences its diabolical actors. The insurgent slaves had all been destroyed, or apprehended, tried and executed, (with the exception of the leader,) without revealing any thing at all satisfactory, as to the motives which governed them, or the means by which they expected to accomplish their object. Every thing connected with this sad affair was wrapt in mystery, until Nat Turner, the leader of this ferocious band, whose name has resounded throughout our widely extended empire, was captured. This "great Bandit" was taken by a single individual, in a cave near the residence of his late owner, on Sunday, the thirtieth of October, without attempting to make the slightest resistance, and on the following day safely lodged in the jail of the County. His captor was Benjamin Phipps, armed with a shot gun well charged. Nat's only weapon was a small light sword which he immediately surrendered, and begged that his life might be spared. Since his confinement, by permission of the Jailor, I have had ready access to him, and finding that he was willing to make a full and free confession of the origin, progress and consummation of the insurrectory movements of the slaves of which he was the contriver and head; I determined for the gratification of public curiosity to commit his statements to writing, and publish them, with little or no variation, from his own words. That this is a faithful record of his confessions, the annexed certificate of the County Court of Southampton, will attest. They certainly bear one stamp of truth and sincerity. He makes no attempt (as all the other insurgents who were examined did,) to exculpate himself, but frankly acknowledges his full participation in all the guilt of the transaction. He was not only the contriver of the conspiracy, but gave the first blow towards its execution.

It will thus appear, that whilst every thing upon the surface of society wore a calm and peaceful aspect; whilst not one note of preparation was heard to warn the devoted inhabitants of woe and death, a gloomy fanatic was revolving in the recesses of his own dark, bewildered, and overwrought mind, schemes of indiscriminate massacre to the whites. Schemes too fearfully executed as far as his fiendish band proceeded in their desolating march. No cry for mercy penetrated their flinty bosoms. No acts of remembered kindness made the least impression upon these remorseless murderers. Men, women and children, from hoary age to helpless infancy were involved in the same cruel fate. Never did a band of savages do their work of death more unsparingly. Apprehension for their own personal safety seems to have been the only principle of restraint in the whole course of their bloody proceedings. And it is not the least remarkable feature in this horrid transaction, that a band actuated by such hellish purposes, should have resisted so feebly, when met by the whites in arms. Desperation alone, one would think, might have led to greater efforts. More than twenty of them attacked Dr. Blunt's house on Tuesday morning, a little before day-break, defended by two men and three boys. They fled precipitately at the first fire; and their future plans of mischief, were entirely disconcerted and broken up. Escaping thence, each individual sought his own safety either in concealment, or by returning home, with the hope that his participation might escape detection, and all were shot down in the course of a few days, or captured and brought to trial and punishment. Nat has survived all his followers, and the gallows will speedily close his career. His own account of the conspiracy is submitted to the public, without comment. It reads an awful, and it is hoped, a useful lesson, as to the operations of a mind like his, endeavoring to grapple with things beyond its reach. How it first became bewildered and confounded, and finally corrupted and led to the conception and perpetration of the most atrocious and heart-rending deeds. It is calculated also to demonstrate the policy of our laws in restraint of this class of our population, and to induce all those entrusted with their execution, as well as our citizens generally, to see that they are strictly and rigidly enforced. Each particular community should look to its own safety, whilst the general guardians of the laws, keep a watchful eye over all. If Nat's statements can be relied on, the insurrection in this county was entirely local, and his designs confided but to a few, and these in his immediate vicinity. It was not instigated by motives of revenge or sudden anger, but the results of long deliberation, and a settled purpose of mind. The offspring of gloomy fanaticism, acting upon materials but too well prepared for such impressions. It will be long remembered in the annals of our country, and many a mother as she presses her infant darling to her bosom, will shudder at the recollection of Nat Turner, and his band of ferocious miscreants.

Believing the following narrative, by removing doubts and conjectures from the public mind which otherwise must have remained, would give general satisfaction, it is respectfully submitted to the public by their ob't serv't,
T.R. GRAY.
Jerusalem, Southampton, Va. Nov. 5, 1831.

We the undersigned, members of the Court convened at Jerusalem, on Saturday, the 5th day of Nov. 1831, for the trial of Nat, alias Nat Turner, a negro slave, late the property of Putnam Moore, deceased, do hereby certify, that the confessions of Nat, to Thomas R. Gray, was read to him in our presence, and that Nat acknowledged the same to be full, free, and voluntary; and that furthermore, when called upon by the presiding Magistrate of the Court, to state if he had any thing to say, why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, replied he had nothing further than he had communicated to Mr. Gray. Given under our hands and seals at Jerusalem, this 5th day of November, 1831.
JEREMIAH COBB, [Seal.]

THOMAS PRETLOW, [Seal.]

JAMES W. PARKER, [Seal.]

CARR BOWERS, [Seal.]

SAMUEL B. HINES, [Seal.]

ORRIS A. BROWNE, [Seal.]

State of Virginia, Southampton County, to wit:

I, James Rochelle, Clerk of the County Court of Southampton in the State of Virginia, do hereby certify, that Jeremiah Cobb, Thomas Pretlow, James W. Parker, Carr Bowers, Samuel B. Hines, and Orris A. Browne, esqr's are acting Justices of the Peace, in and for the County aforesaid, and were members of the Court which convened at Jerusalem, on Saturday the 5th day of November, 1831, for the trial of Nat alias Nat Turner, a negro slave, late the property of Putnam Moore, deceased, who was tried and convicted, as an insurgent in the late insurrection in the county of Southampton aforesaid, and that full faith and credit are due, and ought to be given to their acts as Justices of the peace aforesaid.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my

hand and caused the seal of the Court

[Seal.] aforesaid, to be affixed this 5th day of

November, 1831.

James Rochelle, C.S.C.C.

CONFESSION.

Agreeable to his own appointment, on the evening he was committed to prison, with permission of the jailer, I visited NAT on Tuesday the 1st November, when, without being questioned at all, he commenced his narrative in the following words:—

Sir,—You have asked me to give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection, as you call it—To do so I must go back to the days of my infancy, and even before I was born. I was thirty-one years of age the 2d of October last, and born the property of Benj. Turner, of this county. In my childhood a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the ground work of that enthusiasm, which has terminated so fatally to many, both white and black, and for which I am about to atone at the gallows. It is here necessary to relate this circumstance—trifling as it may seem, it was the commencement of that belief which has grown with time, and even now, sir, in this dungeon, helpless and forsaken as I am, I cannot divest myself of. Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born—I stuck to my story, however, and related somethings which went, in her opinion, to confirm it—others being called on were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shewn me things that had happened before my birth. And my father and mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast—[a parcel of excrescences which I believe are not at all uncommon, particularly among negroes, as I have seen several with the same. In this case he has either cut them off or they have nearly disappeared]—My grand mother, who was very religious, and to whom I was much attached—my master, who belonged to the church, and other religious persons who visited the house, and whom I often saw at prayers, noticing the singularity of my manners, I suppose, and my uncommon intelligence for a child, remarked I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any service to any one as a slave—To a mind like mine, restless, inquisitive and observant of every thing that was passing, it is easy to suppose that religion was the subject to which it would be directed, and although this subject principally occupied my thoughts—there was nothing that I saw or heard of to which my attention was not directed—The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet—but to the astonishment of the family, one day, when a book was shewn me to keep me from crying, I began spelling the names of different objects—this was a source of wonder to all in the neighborhood, particularly the blacks—and this learning was constantly improved at all opportunities—when I got large enough to go to work, while employed, I was reflecting on many things that would present themselves to my imagination, and whenever an opportunity occurred of looking at a book, when the school children were getting their lessons, I would find many things that the fertility of my own imagination had depicted to me before; all my time, not devoted to my master's service, was spent either in prayer, or in making experiments in casting different things in moulds made of earth, in attempting to make paper, gunpowder, and many other experiments, that although I could not perfect, yet convinced me of its practicability if I had the means.[Footnote: When questioned as to the manner of manufacturing those different articles, he was found well informed on the subject.] I was not addicted to stealing in my youth, nor have ever been—Yet such was the confidence of the negroes in the neighborhood, even at this early period of my life, in my superior judgment, that they would often carry me with them when they were going on any roguery, to plan for them. Growing up among them, with this confidence in my superior judgment, and when this, in their opinions, was perfected by Divine inspiration, from the circumstances already alluded to in my infancy, and which belief was ever afterwards zealously inculcated by the austerity of my life and manners, which became the subject of remark by white and black.—Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer—By this time, having arrived to man's estate, and hearing the scriptures commented on at meetings, I was struck with that particular passage which says: "Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you." I reflected much on this passage, and prayed daily for light on this subject—As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit spoke to me, saying, "Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you." Question—what do you mean by the Spirit. Ans. The Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former days—and I was greatly astonished, and for two years prayed continually, whenever my duty would permit—and then again I had the same revelation, which fully confirmed me in the impression that I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty. Several years rolled round, in which many events occurred to strengthen me in this my belief. At this time I reverted in my mind to the remarks made of me in my childhood, and the things that had been shewn me—and as it had been said of me in my childhood by those by whom I had been taught to pray, both white and black, and in whom I had the greatest confidence, that I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any use to any one as a slave. Now finding I had arrived to man's estate, and was a slave, and these revelations being made known to me, I began to direct my attention to this great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended. Knowing the influence I had obtained over the minds of my fellow servants, (not by the means of conjuring and such like tricks—for to them I always spoke of such things with contempt) but by the communion of the Spirit whose revelations I often communicated to them, and they believed and said my wisdom came from God. I now began to prepare them for my purpose, by telling them something was about to happen that would terminate in fulfilling the great promise that had been made to me—About this time I was placed under an overseer, from whom I ran away—and after remaining in the woods thirty days, I returned, to the astonishment of the negroes on the plantation, who thought I had made my escape to some other part of the country, as my father had done before. But the reason of my return was, that the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world, and not to the kingdom of Heaven, and that I should return to the service of my earthly master—"For he who knoweth his Master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus have I chastened you." And the negroes found fault, and murmurred against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world. And about this time I had a vision—and I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened—the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in streams—and I heard a voice saying, "Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bare it." I now withdrew myself as much as my situation would permit, from the intercourse of my fellow servants, for the avowed purpose of serving the Spirit more fully—and it appeared to me, and reminded me of the things it had already shown me, and that it would then reveal to me the knowledge of the elements, the revolution of the planets, the operation of tides, and changes of the seasons. After this revelation in the year 1825, and the knowledge of the elements being made known to me, I sought more than ever to obtain true holiness before the great day of judgment should appear, and then I began to receive the true knowledge of faith. And from the first steps of righteousness until the last, was I made perfect; and the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, "Behold me as I stand in the Heavens"—and I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes—and there were lights in the sky to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were—for they were the lights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary for the redemption of sinners. And I wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof—and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven—and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood—and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me—For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew—and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand. About this time I told these things to a white man, (Etheldred T. Brantley) on whom it had a wonderful effect—and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked immediately with a cutaneous eruption, and blood ozed from the pores of his skin, and after praying and fasting nine days, he was healed, and the Spirit appeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour had been baptised so should we be also—and when the white people would not let us be baptised by the church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptised by the Spirit—After this I rejoiced greatly, and gave thanks to God. And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first. Ques. Do you not find yourself mistaken now? Ans. Was not Christ crucified. And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work—and until the first sign appeared, I should conceal it from the knowledge of men—And on the appearance of the sign, (the eclipse of the sun last February) I should arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons. And immediately on the sign appearing in the heavens, the seal was removed from my lips, and I communicated the great work laid out for me to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence, (Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam)—It was intended by us to have begun the work of death on the 4th July last—Many were the plans formed and rejected by us, and it affected my mind to such a degree, that I fell sick, and the time passed without our coming to any determination how to commence—Still forming new schemes and rejecting them, when the sign appeared again, which determined me not to wait longer.

Since the commencement of 1830, I had been living with Mr. Joseph Travis, who was to me a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to me. On Saturday evening, the 20th of August, it was agreed between Henry, Hark and myself, to prepare a dinner the next day for the men we expected, and then to concert a plan, as we had not yet determined on any. Hark, on the following morning, brought a pig, and Henry brandy, and being joined by Sam, Nelson, Will and Jack, they prepared in the woods a dinner, where, about three o'clock, I joined them.

Q. Why were you so backward in joining them.

A. The same reason that had caused me not to mix with them for years before.

I saluted them on coming up, and asked Will how came he there, he answered, his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him. I asked him if he thought to obtain it? He said he would, or loose his life. This was enough to put him in full confidence. Jack, I knew, was only a tool in the hands of Hark, it was quickly agreed we should commence at home (Mr. J. Travis') on that night, and until we had armed and equipped ourselves, and gathered sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared, (which was invariably adhered to.) We remained at the feast, until about two hours in the night, when we went to the house and found Austin; they all went to the cider press and drank, except myself. On returning to the house, Hark went to the door with an axe, for the purpose of breaking it open, as we knew we were strong enough to murder the family, if they were awaked by the noise; but reflecting that it might create an alarm in the neighborhood, we determined to enter the house secretly, and murder them whilst sleeping. Hark got a ladder and set it against the chimney, on which I ascended, and hoisting a window, entered and came down stairs, unbarred the door, and removed the guns from their places. It was then observed that I must spill the first blood. On which, armed with a hatchet, and accompanied by Will, I entered my master's chamber, it being dark, I could not give a death blow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it was his last word, Will laid him dead, with a blow of his axe, and Mrs. Travis shared the same fate, as she lay in bed. The murder of this family, five in number, was the work of a moment, not one of them awoke; there was a little infant sleeping in a cradle, that was forgotten, until we had left the house and gone some distance, when Henry and Will returned and killed it; we got here, four guns that would shoot, and several old muskets, with a pound or two of powder. We remained some time at the barn, where we paraded; I formed them in a line as soldiers, and after carrying them through all the manoeuvres I was master of, marched them off to Mr. Salathul Francis', about six hundred yards distant. Sam and Will went to the door and knocked. Mr. Francis asked who was there, Sam replied it was him, and he had a letter for him, on which he got up and came to the door; they immediately seized him, and dragging him out a little from the door, he was dispatched by repeated blows on the head; there was no other white person in the family. We started from there for Mrs. Reese's, maintaining the most perfect silence on our march, where finding the door unlocked, we entered, and murdered Mrs. Reese in her bed, while sleeping; her son awoke, but it was only to sleep the sleep of death, he had only time to say who is that, and he was no more. From Mrs. Reese's we went to Mrs. Turner's, a mile distant, which we reached about sunrise, on Monday morning. Henry, Austin, and Sam, went to the still, where, finding Mr. Peebles, Austin shot him, and the rest of us went to the house; as we approached, the family discovered us, and shut the door. Vain hope! Will, with one stroke of his axe, opened it, and we entered and found Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Newsome in the middle of a room, almost frightened to death. Will immediately killed Mrs. Turner, with one blow of his axe. I took Mrs. Newsome by the hand, and with the sword I had when I was apprehended, I struck her several blows over the head, but not being able to kill her, as the sword was dull. Will turning around and discovering it, despatched her also. A general destruction of property and search for money and ammunition, always succeeded the murders. By this time my company amounted to fifteen, and nine men mounted, who started for Mrs. Whitehead's, (the other six were to go through a by way to Mr. Bryant's, and rejoin us at Mrs. Whitehead's,) as we approached the house we discovered Mr. Richard Whitehead standing in the cotton patch, near the lane fence; we called him over into the lane, and Will, the executioner, was near at hand, with his fatal axe, to send him to an untimely grave. As we pushed on to the house, I discovered some one run round the garden, and thinking it was some of the white family, I pursued them, but finding it was a servant girl belonging to the house, I returned to commence the work of death, but they whom I left, had not been idle; all the family were already murdered, but Mrs. Whitehead and her daughter Margaret. As I came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body, with his broad axe. Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had concealed herself in the corner, formed by the projection of the cellar cap from the house; on my approach she fled, but was soon overtaken, and after repeated blows with a sword, I killed her by a blow on the head, with a fence rail. By this time, the six who had gone by Mr. Bryant's, rejoined us, and informed me they had done the work of death assigned them. We again divided, part going to Mr. Richard Porter's, and from thence to Nathaniel Francis', the others to Mr. Howell Harris', and Mr. T. Doyles. On my reaching Mr. Porter's, he had escaped with his family. I understood there, that the alarm had already spread, and I immediately returned to bring up those sent to Mr. Doyles, and Mr. Howell Harris'; the party I left going on to Mr. Francis', having told them I would join them in that neighborhood. I met these sent to Mr. Doyles' and Mr. Harris' returning, having met Mr. Doyle on the road and killed him; and learning from some who joined them, that Mr. Harris was from home, I immediately pursued the course taken by the party gone on before; but knowing they would complete the work of death and pillage, at Mr. Francis' before I could get there, I went to Mr. Peter Edwards', expecting to find them there, but they had been here also. I then went to Mr. John T. Barrow's, they had been here and murdered him. I pursued on their track to Capt. Newit Harris', where I found the greater part mounted, and ready to start; the men now amounting to about forty, shouted and hurraed as I rode up, some were in the yard, loading their guns, others drinking. They said Captain Harris and his family had escaped, the property in the house they destroyed, robbing him of money and other valuables. I ordered them to mount and march instantly, this was about nine or ten o'clock, Monday morning. I proceeded to Mr. Levi Waller's, two or three miles distant. I took my station in the rear, and as it 'twas my object to carry terror and devastation wherever we went, I placed fifteen or twenty of the best armed and most to be relied on, in front, who generally approached the houses as fast as their horses could run; this was for two purposes, to prevent their escape and strike terror to the inhabitants—on this account I never got to the houses, after leaving Mrs. Whitehead's, until the murders were committed, except in one case. I sometimes got in sight in time to see the work of death completed, viewed the mangled bodies as they lay, in silent satisfaction, and immediately started in quest of other victims—Having murdered Mrs. Waller and ten children, we started for Mr. William Williams'—having killed him and two little boys that were there; while engaged in this, Mrs. Williams fled and got some distance from the house, but she was pursued, overtaken, and compelled to get up behind one of the company, who brought her back, and after showing her the mangled body of her lifeless husband, she was told to get down and lay by his side, where she was shot dead. I then started for Mr. Jacob Williams, where the family were murdered—Here we found a young man named Drury, who had come on business with Mr. Williams—he was pursued, overtaken and shot. Mrs. Vaughan was the next place we visited—and after murdering the family here, I determined on starting for Jerusalem—Our number amounted now to fifty or sixty, all mounted and armed with guns, axes, swords and clubs—On reaching Mr. James W. Parkers' gate, immediately on the road leading to Jerusalem, and about three miles distant, it was proposed to me to call there, but I objected, as I knew he was gone to Jerusalem, and my object was to reach there as soon as possible; but some of the men having relations at Mr. Parker's it was agreed that they might call and get his people. I remained at the gate on the road, with seven or eight; the others going across the field to the house, about half a mile off. After waiting some time for them, I became impatient, and started to the house for them, and on our return we were met by a party of white men, who had pursued our bloodstained track, and who had fired on those at the gate, and dispersed them, which I new nothing of, not having been at that time rejoined by any of them—Immediately on discovering the whites, I ordered my men to halt and form, as they appeared to be alarmed—The white men, eighteen in number, approached us in about one hundred yards, when one of them fired, (this was against the positive orders of Captain Alexander P. Peete, who commanded, and who had directed the men to reserve their fire until within thirty paces) And I discovered about half of them retreating, I then ordered my men to fire and rush on them; the few remaining stood their ground until we approached within fifty yards, when they fired and retreated. We pursued and overtook some of them who we thought we left dead; (they were not killed) after pursuing them about two hundred yards, and rising a little hill, I discovered they were met by another party, and had haulted, and were re-loading their guns, (this was a small party from Jerusalem who knew the negroes were in the field, and had just tied their horses to await their return to the road, knowing that Mr. Parker and family were in Jerusalem, but knew nothing of the party that had gone in with Captain Peete; on hearing the firing they immediately rushed to the spot and arrived just in time to arrest the progress of these barbarous villians, and save the lives of their friends and fellow citizens.) Thinking that those who retreated first, and the party who fired on us at fifty or sixty yards distant, had all only fallen back to meet others with amunition. As I saw them re-loading their guns, and more coming up than I saw at first, and several of my bravest men being wounded, the others became panick struck and squandered over the field; the white men pursued and fired on us several times. Hark had his horse shot under him, and I caught another for him as it was running by me; five or six of my men were wounded, but none left on the field; finding myself defeated here I instantly determined to go through a private way, and cross the Nottoway river at the Cypress Bridge, three miles below Jerusalem, and attack that place in the rear, as I expected they would look for me on the other road, and I had a great desire to get there to procure arms and amunition. After going a short distance in this private way, accompanied by about twenty men, I overtook two or three who told me the others were dispersed in every direction. After trying in vain to collect a sufficient force to proceed to Jerusalem, I determined to return, as I was sure they would make back to their old neighborhood, where they would rejoin me, make new recruits, and come down again. On my way back, I called at Mrs. Thomas's, Mrs. Spencer's, and several other places, the white families having fled, we found no more victims to gratify our thirst for blood, we stopped at Majr. Ridley's quarter for the night, and being joined by four of his men, with the recruits made since my defeat, we mustered now about forty strong. After placing out sentinels, I laid down to sleep, but was quickly roused by a great racket; starting up, I found some mounted, and others in great confusion; one of the sentinels having given the alarm that we were about to be attacked, I ordered some to ride round and reconnoitre, and on their return the others being more alarmed, not knowing who they were, fled in different ways, so that I was reduced to about twenty again; with this I determined to attempt to recruit, and proceed on to rally in the neighborhood, I had left. Dr. Blunt's was the nearest house, which we reached just before day; on riding up the yard, Hark fired a gun. We expected Dr. Blunt and his family were at Maj. Ridley's, as I knew there was a company of men there; the gun was fired to ascertain if any of the family were at home; we were immediately fired upon and retreated, leaving several of my men. I do not know what became of them, as I never saw them afterwards. Pursuing our course back and coming in sight of Captain Harris', where we had been the day before, we discovered a party of white men at the house, on which all deserted me but two, (Jacob and Nat,) we concealed ourselves in the woods until near night, when I sent them in search of Henry, Sam, Nelson, and Hark, and directed them to rally all they could, at the place we had had our dinner the Sunday before, where they would find me, and I accordingly returned there as soon as it was dark and remained until Wednesday evening, when discovering white men riding around the place as though they were looking for some one, and none of my men joining me, I concluded Jacob and Nat had been taken, and compelled to betray me. On this I gave up all hope for the present; and on Thursday night after having supplied myself with provisions from Mr. Travis's, I scratched a hole under a pile of fence rails in a field, where I concealed myself for six weeks, never leaving my hiding place but for a few minutes in the dead of night to get water which was very near; thinking by this time I could venture out, I began to go about in the night and eaves drop the houses in the neighborhood; pursuing this course for about a fortnight and gathering little or no intelligence, afraid of speaking to any human being, and returning every morning to my cave before the dawn of day. I know not how long I might have led this life, if accident had not betrayed me, a dog in the neighborhood passing by my hiding place one night while I was out, was attracted by some meat I had in my cave, and crawled in and stole it, and was coming out just as I returned. A few nights after, two negroes having started to go hunting with the same dog, and passed that way, the dog came again to the place, and having just gone out to walk about, discovered me and barked, on which thinking myself discovered, I spoke to them to beg concealment. On making myself known they fled from me. Knowing then they would betray me, I immediately left my hiding place, and was pursued almost incessantly until I was taken a fortnight afterwards by Mr. Benjamin Phipps, in a little hole I had dug out with my sword, for the purpose of concealment, under the top of a fallen tree. On Mr. Phipps' discovering the place of my concealment, he cocked his gun and aimed at me. I requested him not to shoot and I would give up, upon which he demanded my sword. I delivered it to him, and he brought me to prison. During the time I was pursued, I had many hair breadth escapes, which your time will not permit you to relate. I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer the fate that awaits me.

I here proceeded to make some inquiries of him, after assuring him of the certain death that awaited him, and that concealment would only bring destruction on the innocent as well as guilty, of his own color, if he knew of any extensive or concerted plan. His answer was, I do not. When I questioned him as to the insurrection in North Carolina happening about the same time, he denied any knowledge of it; and when I looked him in the face as though I would search his inmost thoughts, he replied, "I see sir, you doubt my word; but can you not think the same ideas, and strange appearances about this time in the heaven's might prompt others, as well as myself, to this undertaking." I now had much conversation with and asked him many questions, having forborne to do so previously, except in the cases noted in parenthesis; but during his statement, I had, unnoticed by him, taken notes as to some particular circumstances, and having the advantage of his statement before me in writing, on the evening of the third day that I had been with him, I began a cross examination, and found his statement corroborated by every circumstance coming within my own knowledge or the confessions of others whom had been either killed or executed, and whom he had not seen nor had any knowledge since 22d of August last, he expressed himself fully satisfied as to the impracticability of his attempt. It has been said he was ignorant and cowardly, and that his object was to murder and rob for the purpose of obtaining money to make his escape. It is notorious, that he was never known to have a dollar in his life; to swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits. As to his ignorance, he certainly never had the advantages of education, but he can read and write, (it was taught him by his parents,) and for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, is surpassed by few men I have ever seen. As to his being a coward, his reason as given for not resisting Mr. Phipps, shews the decision of his character. When he saw Mr. Phipps present his gun, he said he knew it was impossible for him to escape as the woods were full of men; he therefore thought it was better to surrender, and trust to fortune for his escape. He is a complete fanatic, or plays his part most admirably. On other subjects he possesses an uncommon share of intelligence, with a mind capable of attaining any thing; but warped and perverted by the influence of early impressions. He is below the ordinary stature, though strong and active, having the true negro face, every feature of which is strongly marked. I shall not attempt to describe the effect of his narrative, as told and commented on by himself, in the condemned hole of the prison. The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains; yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man; I looked on him and my blood curdled in my veins.

I will not shock the feelings of humanity, nor wound afresh the bosoms of the disconsolate sufferers in this unparalleled and inhuman massacre, by detailing the deeds of their fiend-like barbarity. There were two or three who were in the power of these wretches, had they known it, and who escaped in the most providential manner. There were two whom they thought they left dead on the field at Mr. Parker's, but who were only stunned by the blows of their guns, as they did not take time to re-load when they charged on them. The escape of a little girl who went to school at Mr. Waller's, and where the children were collecting for that purpose, excited general sympathy. As their teacher had not arrived, they were at play in the yard, and seeing the negroes approach, she ran up on a dirt chimney, (such as are common to log houses,) and remained there unnoticed during the massacre of the eleven that were killed at this place. She remained on her hiding place till just before the arrival of a party, who were in pursuit of the murderers, when she came down and fled to a swamp, where, a mere child as she was, with the horrors of the late scene before her, she lay concealed until the next day, when seeing a party go up to the house, she came up, and on being asked how she escaped, replied with the utmost simplicity, "The Lord helped her." She was taken up behind a gentleman of the party, and returned to the arms of her weeping mother. Miss Whitehead concealed herself between the bed and the mat that supported it, while they murdered her sister in the same room, without discovering her. She was afterwards carried off, and concealed for protection by a slave of the family, who gave evidence against several of them on their trial. Mrs. Nathaniel Francis, while concealed in a closet heard their blows, and the shrieks of the victims of these ruthless savages; they then entered the closet where she was concealed, and went out without discovering her. While in this hiding place, she heard two of her women in a quarrel about the division of her clothes. Mr. John T. Baron, discovering them approaching his house, told his wife to make her escape, and scorning to fly, fell fighting on his own threshold. After firing his rifle, he discharged his gun at them, and then broke it over the villain who first approached him, but he was overpowered, and slain. His bravery, however, saved from the hands of these monsters, his lovely and amiable wife, who will long lament a husband so deserving of her love. As directed by him, she attempted to escape through the garden, when she was caught and held by one of her servant girls, but another coming to her rescue, she fled to the woods, and concealed herself. Few indeed, were those who escaped their work of death. But fortunate for society, the hand of retributive justice has overtaken them; and not one that was known to be concerned has escaped.

The Commonwealth,

vs.

Nat Turner.

Charged with making insurrection,

and plotting to take away the lives of

divers free white persons, &c.

on the 22d of August, 1831.

The court composed of ——, having met for the trial of Nat Turner, the prisoner was brought in and arraigned, and upon his arraignment pleaded Not guilty, saying to his counsel, that he did not feel so.

On the part of the Commonwealth, Levi Waller was introduced, who being sworn, deposed as follows: (agreeably to Nat's own Confession.) Col. Trezvant[Footnote:The committing Magistrate.] was then introduced, who being sworn, numerated Nat's Confession to him, as follows: (his Confession as given to Mr. Gray.) The prisoner introduced no evidence, and the case was submitted without argument to the court, who having found him guilty, Jeremiah Cobb, Esq. Chairman, pronounced the sentence of the court, in the following words: "Nat Turner! Stand up. Have you any thing to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced against you?"

Ans. I have not. I have made a full confession to Mr. Gray, and I have nothing more to say.

Attend then to the sentence of the Court. You have been arraigned and tried before this court, and convicted of one of the highest crimes in our criminal code. You have been convicted of plotting in cold blood, the indiscriminate destruction of men, of helpless women, and of infant children. The evidence before us leaves not a shadow of doubt, but that your hands were often imbrued in the blood of the innocent; and your own confession tells us that they were stained with the blood of a master; in your own language, "too indulgent." Could I stop here, your crime would be sufficiently aggravated. But the original contriver of a plan, deep and deadly, one that never can be effected, you managed so far to put it into execution, as to deprive us of many of our most valuable citizens; and this was done when they were asleep, and defenceless; under circumstances shocking to humanity. And while upon this part of the subject, I cannot but call your attention to the poor misguided wretches who have gone before you. They are not few in number—they were your bosom associates; and the blood of all cries aloud, and calls upon you, as the author of their misfortune. Yes! You forced them unprepared, from Time to Eternity. Borne down by this load of guilt, your only justification is, that you were led away by fanaticism. If this be true, from my soul I pity you; and while you have my sympathies, I am, nevertheless called upon to pass the sentence of the court. The time between this and your execution, will necessarily be very short; and your only hope must be in another world. The judgment of the court is, that you be taken hence to the jail from whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and on Friday next, between the hours of 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. be hung by the neck until you are dead! dead! dead! and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.

A list of persons murdered in the Insurrection, on the 21st and 22d of August, 1831.

Joseph Travers and wife and three children, Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, Hartwell Prebles, Sarah Newsome, Mrs. P. Reese and son William, Trajan Doyle, Henry Bryant and wife and child, and wife's mother, Mrs. Catharine Whitehead, son Richard and four daughters and grand-child, Salathiel Francis, Nathaniel Francis' overseer and two children, John T. Barrow, George Vaughan, Mrs. Levi Waller and ten children, William Williams, wife and two boys, Mrs. Caswell Worrell and child, Mrs. Rebecca Vaughan, Ann Eliza Vaughan, and son Arthur, Mrs. John K. Williams and child, Mrs. Jacob Williams and three children, and Edwin Drury—amounting to fifty-five.

A List of Negroes brought before the Court of Southampton, with their owners' names, and sentence.

Daniel, Richard Porter, Convicted.

Moses, J.T. Barrow, Do.

Tom, Caty Whitehead, Discharged.

Jack and Andrew, Caty Whitehead, Con. and transported.

Jacob, Geo. H. Charlton, Disch'd without trial.

Isaac, Ditto, Convi. and transported.

Jack, Everett Bryant, Discharged.

Nathan, Benj. Blunt's estate, Convicted.

Nathan, Tom, and

Davy, (boys,) Nathaniel Francis, Convicted and transported.

Davy, Elizabeth Turner, Convicted.

Curtis, Thomas Ridley, Do.

Stephen, Do. Do.

Hardy and Isham, Benjamin Edwards, Convicted and transp'd.

Sam, Nathaniel Francis, Convicted.

Hark, Joseph Travis' estate. Do.

Moses, (a boy,) Do. Do. and transported

Davy, Levi Waller, Convicted.

Nelson, Jacob Williams, Do.

Nat, Edm'd Turner's estate, Do.

Jack, Wm. Reese's estate, Do.

Dred, Nathaniel Francis, Do.

Arnold, Artist, (free,) Discharged.

Sam, J.W. Parker, Acquitted.

Ferry and Archer, J.W. Parker, Disch'd without trial.

Jim, William Vaughan, Acquitted.

Bob, Temperance Parker, Do.

Davy, Joseph Parker,

Daniel, Solomon D. Parker, Disch'd without trial.

Thomas Haithcock, (free,) Sent on for further trial.

Joe, John C. Turner, Convicted.

Lucy, John T. Barrow, Do.

Matt, Thomas Ridley, Acquitted.

Jim, Richard Porter, Do.

Exum Artes, (free,) Sent on for further trial.

Joe, Richard P. Briggs, Disch'd without trial.

Bury Newsome, (free,) Sent on for further trial.

Stephen James Bell, Acquitted.

Jim and Isaac, Samuel Champion, Convicted and trans'd.

Preston, Hannah Williamson, Acquitted.

Frank, Solomon D. Parker, Convi'd and transp'd.

Jack and Shadrach, Nathaniel Simmons, Acquitted.

Nelson, Benj. Blunt's estate, Do.

Sam, Peter Edwards, Convicted.

Archer, Arthur G. Reese, Acquitted.

Isham Turner, (free,) Sent on for further trial.

Nat Turner, Putnam Moore, dec'd, Convicted.

John Henrik Clarke

2011-03-24T16:57:00.000-04:00

A Search For Identity

By John Henrik Clarke (May 1970)
My own search for an identity began as I think it begins for all young people a long time ago when I looked at the world around me and tried to understand what it was all about. My first teacher was my great grandmother whom we called "Mom Mary." She had been a slave first in Georgia and later in Alabama where I was born in Union Springs. It was her who told us the stories about our family and about how it had resisted slavery. More than anything else, she repeatedly told us the story of Buck, her first husband, and how he had been sold to a man who owned a stud farm in Virginia. Stud farms are an aspect of slavery that has been omitted from the record and about which we do not talk any more. We should remember, however, that there were times in this country when owners used slaves to breed stronger slaves in the same way that a special breed of horse is used to breed other horses.
My great grandmother had three children with Buck my grandfather Jonah, my grandaunt Liza, who was a midwife, and another child. With Buck, Mom Mary had as close to a marriage as a slave can have marriage with the permission of the respective masters. Mom Mary had a lifelong love affair with Buck, and years later after the emancipation she went to Virginia and searched for him for three years. She never found him, and she came back to Alabama where she spent the last years of her life.
My Family
Mom Mary was the historian of our family. Years later when I went to Africa and listened to oral historians, I knew that my great grandmother was not very different from the old men and women who sit around in front of their houses and tell the young children the stories of their people how they came from one place to another, how they searched for safety, and how they tried to resist when the Europeans came to their lands.
This great grandmother was so dear to me that I have deified her in almost the same way that many Africans deify their old people. I think that my search for identity, my search for what the world was about, and my relationship to the world began when I listened to the stories of that old woman. I remember that she always ended the stories in the same way that she said "Good-bye" or "Good morning" to people. It was always with the reminder, "Run the race, and run it by faith." She was a deeply religious woman in a highly practical sense. She did not rule out resistance as a form of obedience to God. She thought that the human being should not permit himself to be dehumanized. And her concept of God was so pure and so practical that she could see that resistance to slavery was a form of obedience to God. She did not think that any of us children should be enslaved, and she thought that anyone who had enslaved any one of God's children had violated the very will of God.
I think Buck's pride in his manhood was the major force that always made her revere her relationship with him. He was a proud man and he resisted. One of the main reasons for selling him to a man to use on a stud farm was that he could breed strong slaves whose wills the master would then break. This dehumanizing process was a recurring aspect of slavery.
Growing up in Alabama, my father was a brooding, landless sharecropper, always wanting to own his own land; but on my father's side of the family there had been no ownership of land at all. One day after a storm had damaged our farm and literally blown the roof off our house, he decided to take his family to a mill city Columbus, Georgia. He had hoped that one day he would make enough money to return to Alabama as an independent farmer. He pursued this dream the rest of his life. Ultimately the pursuit of this dream killed him. Now he has a piece of land, six feet deep and the length of his body; that is as close as he ever came to being an independent owner of land.
In Columbus I went to county schools, and I was the first member of the family of nine children to learn to read. I did so by picking up signs, grocery handbills, and many other things that people threw away into the street, and by studying the signboards. I knew more about the different brands of cigarettes and what they contained than I knew about the history of the country. I would read the labels on tin cans to see where the products were made, and these scattered things were my first books. I remember one day picking up a leaflet advertising that the Ku Klux Klan was riding again.
Because I had learned to read early, great things were expected of me. I was a Sunday school teacher of the junior class before I was ten years old, and I was the one person who would stop at the different homes in the community to read the Bible to the old ladies. In spite of growing up in such abject poverty, I grew up in a very rich cultural environment that had its oral history and with people who not only cared for me but also pampered me in many ways. I know that his kind of upbringing negates all the modern sociological explanations of black people that assume that everybody who was poor was without love. I had love aplenty and appreciation aplenty, all of which gave me a sense of self-worth that many young black children never develop.
I began my search for my people first in the Bible. I wondered why all the characters even those who, like Moses, were born in Africa were white. Reading the description of Christ as swarthy and with hair like sheep's wool, I wondered why the church depicted him as blond and blue-eyed. Where was the hair like sheep's wool? Where was the swarthy complexion? I looked at the map of Africa and I knew Moses had been born in Africa. How did Moses become so white? If he went down to Ethiopia to marry Zeporah, why was Zeporah so white? Who painted the world white? Then I began to search for the definition of myself and my people in relationship to world history, and I began to wonder how we had become lost from the commentary of world history.
My Teachers
In my first years in city schools in Columbus, Georgia, my favorite teacher and the one I best remember was Evelena Taylor, who first taught me to believe in myself. She took my face between her two hands and looking at me straight in the eyes, said, "I believe in you." It meant something for her to tell me that she believed in me, that the color of my skin was not supposed to be a barrier to my aspirations, what education is, and what it is supposed to do for me.
These were lonely years for me. These were the years after the death of my mother a beautiful woman, a washerwoman who had been saving fifty cents a week for my education, hoping that eventually she would be able to send her oldest son to college. Her hopes did not materialize; she died long before I was ten. I did, however, go to school earlier than some of the other children. We lived just outside of the city limits. Children living beyond the city limits were supposed to go to county schools because the city schools charged county residents $3.75 each semester for the use of books. This was a monumental sum of money for us because my father made from $10.00 to $14.00 a week as a combination farmer and fire tender at brickyards.
In order to get the $3.75 required each semester, my father made a contribution and my various uncles made contributions. It was a collective thing to raise what was for us a large some of money not only to send a child to a city school instead of to a county school but also to make certain that the one child in the family attending the city school had slightly better clothing that the other children. So I had a coat that was fairly warm and a pair of shoes that was supposed to be warm but really was not. As I think about the shoes, my feet sometimes get cold even now, but I did not tell my benefactors that the shoes were not keeping me warm.
I grew up in a religious environment after we came to Columbus, Georgia, and after the passing of my mother. The local church became my community center and the place where most of the community activities occurred. It was here that I wondered about my place in history and why I could not find any of my people in any of the books that I read, and my concern began to change to irritation. Where were we in history? Did we just spring as a people from nothing? What were our old roots?
As I approached the end of my last year in grammar school, Evelena Taylor told me that she would not let me use the color of my skin as an excuse for not preparing lessons or an excuse for not aspiring to be true to myself and my greatest potential. She taught me that I must always prepare.
I think my value to the whole field of teaching history is that I have prepared during my lifetime, and I have prepared in the years when no one was thinking anything about black studies, but I kept on preparing until ultimately the door opened. I had to search, however, for some definitions of myself, and during that last year in grammar school, I began to receive some of the privileges in the school that generally went to the light-complected youngsters whom we called "The Light Brigade." They were sons and daughters of the professional blacks the doctors and the teachers who were usually of light complexion. I was the leader of the group called "The Dark Brigade," the poorest of the children who came from the other side of the railroad tracks. I received that privilege in the school, not just as the leader of the contingent of young people who came form my neighborhood, but because for once the teachers could nominate the best student to ring the bell. Mrs. Taylor, who played no favorites, nominated me.
This privilege gave me my first sense of power the feeling that I could stand in a window and ring a bell and five hundred children would march out, or I could ring it earlier or later, but they were simply immobile until I rang that bell. After handling my responsibility a little recklessly for a few days by ringing the bell a little early or a little late just to prove my prerogative to do it, I realized that I was not living up to my best potential as Mrs. Taylor meant it. Then I began to exercise this responsibility in the exact manner in which it was supposed do be exercised: to ring the bell for the first recess at exactly 10:15 A.M., to ring the bell for the second recess at noon, to ring for the return of the children into the school at exactly 12:45 P.M., and to ring for dismissal at exactly 3:00 P.M. Thereby, I learned something about the proper use of authority and responsibility.
I wanted to advance the status of my particular little group, the poorest students in the school. They were not the poorest in the way they learned their lessons because they could readily compete with students who came from homes where they had books and some degree of comfort and who wore shoes even in the summertime (which was unthinkable to us because generally we had one pair of shoes and that pair had to last the entire year). I wanted, however, to do something to make my group look exceptionally good. I had been the leader of the current events forum in my school, and because I worked before and after school mostly for white people who had good libraries and children who never read the books, I began to borrow books from their libraries and bring them home. In Columbus, Georgia, where they had Jim Crow libraries and black people could not use the public library, I began to forge the names of well-known white people on notes that instructed the librarian to give me a certain book. I accumulated a great many books that way. This illegitimate book borrowing went on for quite some time until one day the white person whose name I had forged appeared in the library at the same time I did. That put an end to my illegitimate use of the public library of Columbus.
One Friday evening when the teachers let us do whatever we wanted to do, I planned to do something extraordinary in the leadership of the current events forum. My group had always done a few exceptional things because I would take the magazines and newspapers from the homes of the whites, and, rather than throw them into the garbage can, I would distribute them among our group. I also brought copies of the World Almanac once a year. My group, therefore, always had news from Atlanta, news about the Japanese navy, and news about many different things. When they spoke in school about current events, they were able to speak with authority about international news because they had authoritative sources.
I have always had a phenomenal memory. When I was a youngster, I could quote verbatim much of what I had read in almanacs and in small encyclopedias. In trying literally to outdo "The Light Brigade," I decided to prepare something on the role of the black man in ancient history. I went to a lawyer for whom I worked. He was a kind man whose library I had used quite extensively. I asked him for a book on the role that black people had played in ancient history. In a kindly was he told me that I came from a people who had no history but, that if I persevered and obeyed the laws, my people might one day make history. Then he paid me the highest complement that a white man could pay a black man in the period when I was growing up. He told me that one day I might grow up to be a great Negro like Booker T. Washington.
At that time white people considered that the greatest achievement to which a black man could aspire was to reach the status of the great educator, Booker T. Washington. He had been a great educator and he did build up Tuskegee Institute, but he consistently cautioned his people to be patient with the Jim Crow system and to learn to be good servants and artisans. He said it was more important to earn a dollar a day (at the turn of the century that was considered good pay for a black man) than to hope or work to sit next to white people in the opera. He was actually telling his people never to seek social equality, and later on he was challenged by W.E.B. DuBois, who created a whole new school of thought based on the belief that blacks should aspire to anything they wanted, be it streetcleaner or president
At the time of my conversation with the lawyer I had nothing for or against Booker T. Washington. I really didn't know much about the lawyer, and his philosophy of racial equality didn't mean a great deal to me. What insulted every part of me to the very depth of my being was his assumption that I came from a people without any history. At that point of my life I began a systematic search for my people's role in history.
Other Influences
During my first year in high school I was doing chores and, because the new high school did not even have a cloakroom, I had to hold the books and papers of a guest lecturer. The speaker had a copy of a book called The New Negro. Fortunately I turned to an essay written by a Puerto Rican of African descent with a German-sounding name. It was called "The Negro Digs Up His Past," by Arthur A. Schomburg (edited by Alan Locke. New York: Albert and Charles Bone, 1925, pp. 231 37). I knew then that I came from a people with a history older even than that of Europe. It was a most profound and overwhelming feeling this great discovery that my people did have a place in history and that, indeed, their history is older than that of their oppressors.
The essay, "The Negro Digs Up His Past," was my introduction to the ancient history of the black people. Years later when I came to New York, I started to search for Arthur A. Schomburg. Finally, one day I went to the 135th Street library and asked a short-tempered clerk to give me a letter to Arthur A. Schomburg. In an abrupt manner she said, "You will have to walk up three flights." I did so, and there I saw Arthur Schomburg taking charge of the office containing the Schomburg collection of books relating to African people the world over, while the other staff members were out to lunch. I told him impatiently that I wanted to know the history of my people, and I wanted to know it right now and in the quickest possible way. His patience more than matched my impatience. He said, "Sit down, son. What you are calling African history and Negro history is nothing but the missing pages of world history. You will have to know general history to understand these specific aspects of history." He continued patiently, "You have to study your oppressor. That's where your history got lost." Then I began to think that at last I will find out how an entire people�my people disappeared from the respected commentary of human history.
It took time for me to learn that there is no easy way to study history. (There is in fact, no easy way to study anything.) It is necessary to understand all the components of history in order to recognize its totality. It is similar to knowing where the tributaries of a river are in order to understand the nature of what made the river so big. Mr. Schomburg, therefore, told me to study general history. He said repeatedly, "Study the history of your oppressor."
I began to study the general history of Europe, and I discovered that the first rise of Europe the Greco-Roman period was a period when Europe "borrowed" very heavily from Africa. This early civilization depended for its very existence on what was taken from African civilization. At that time I studied Europe more that I studied Africa because I was following Mr. Schomburg's advice, and I found out how and why the slave trade started.
When I returned to Mr. Schomburg, I was ready to start a systematic study of the history of Africa. It was he who is really responsible for what I am and what value I have for the field of African history and the history of black people the world over.
I grew up in Harlem during the depression, having come to New York at the age of seventeen. I was a young depression radical always studying, always reading, taking advantage of the fact that in New York City I could go into a public library and take out books, read them, bring them back, get some more, and even renew them after six weeks if I hadn't finished them. It was a joyous experience to be exposed to books. Actually, I went through a period of adjustment because my illegitimate borrowing of books from the Jim Crow library of Columbus, Georgia, had not prepared me to walk freely out of a library with a book without feeling like a thief. It took several years before I really felt that I had every right to go there.
During my period of growing up in Harlem, many black teachers were begging for black students, but they did not have to beg me. Men like Willis N. Huggins, Charles C. Serfait, and Mr. Schomburg literally trained me not only to study African history and black people the world over but to teach this history.
My Teaching
All the training I received from my teachers was really set in motion by my great grandmother telling me the stories of my family and my early attempts to search first for my identity as a person, then for the definition of my family, and finally for the role of my people in the in the whole flow of human history.
One thing that I learned very early was that knowing history and teaching it are two different things, and the first does not necessarily prepare one for the second. At first I was an exceptionally poor teacher because I crowded too many of my facts together and they were poorly organized. I was nervous, overanxious, and impatient with my students. I began my teaching career in community centers in Harlem. However, I learned that before I could become an effective teacher, I had to gain better control of myself as a human being. I had to acquire patience with young people who giggled when they were told about African kings. I had to understand that these young people had been so brainwashed by our society that they could see themselves only as depressed beings. I had to realized that they had in many ways adjusted to their oppression and that I needed considerable patience, many teaching skills, and great love for them in order to change their attitudes. I had to learn to be a more patient and understand human being. I had to take command of myself and understand why I was blaming people for not being so well versed in history. In effect, I was saying to them, "How dare you not know this?"
After learning what I would have to do with myself and my subject matter in order to make it more understandable to people with no prior knowledge, I began to become an effective teacher. I learned that teaching history requires not only patience and love but also the ability to make history interesting to the students. I learned that the good teacher is partly an entertainer, and if he lost the attention of his class, he has lost his lesson. A good teacher, like a good entertainer, first must hold his audience's attention. Then he can teach his lesson.
I taught African history in community centers in the Harlem neighborhood for over twenty years before I had any regular school assignment. My first regular assignment was as director of the Heritage Teaching Program at Haryou-Act, an antipoverty agency in Harlem. Here I had the opportunity after school to train young black persons in how to approach history and how to use history as an instrument of personal liberation. I taught them that taking away a people's history is a way to enslave them. I taught them that history is a two-edged sword to be used for oppression or liberation. The major point that I tried, sometimes successfully, to get across to them is that history is supposed to make one self-assured but not arrogant. It is not supposed to give one any privileges over other people, but it should make one see oneself in a new way in relation to other people.
After five years in the Haryou-Act project, I accepted my first regular assignment at the college at which I still teach. I serve also as visiting professor at another university and as an instructor in black heritage during the summer program conducted for teachers by the history department of a third major university. I also travel to the extent that my classes will permit, training teachers how to teach about black heritage. The black power explosion and the black studies explosion have pushed men like me to the forefront in developing approaches to creative and well-documented black curricula. Forced to be in the center of this arena, I have had to take another inventory of myself and my responsibilities. I have found young black students eager for this history and have found many of them having doubts about whether they really had a history in spite of the fact that they had demanded it. I have had to learn patience all over again with young people on another lever.
On the college level I have encountered another kind of young black student much older than those who giggle the kind who does not believe in himself, does not believe in history, and who consequently is in revolt. This student says in effect, "Man, you're turning me on. You know that we didn't rule ancient Egypt." I have had to learn patience all over again as I learned to teach on a level where students come from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
In all my teaching, I have used as my guide the following definition of heritage, and I would like to conclude with it.
Heritage, in essence, is the means by which people have used their talents to create a history that gives them memories they can respect and that they can use to command the respect of other people. The ultimate purpose of heritage and heritage teaching is to use people's talents to develop awareness and pride in themselves so that they themselves can achieve good relationships with other people.

http://www.nbufront.org/MastersMuseums/JHClarke/ArticlesEssays/SearchForIdentity.html

THE INTELLIGENCE ORIGINS OF KWANZAA By Brother Sekhem

2011-03-05T12:50:00.000-05:00

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Kwanzaa: A CIA Creation to Promote Racial Separation

“Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents. ... ” - Ron Karenga
On December 12, 2003, the CIA's Ron Karenga celebrated Kwanzaa - at the Rochester Institute of Technology - a holiday that some African Americans, aware of its origins in the intelligence sector of government, understand and reject.
Mae Brussell on Ron Karenga, Originator of "Kwanzaa."
Black leader of the US Organization. In December, 1967, Detective Sergeant R. Farwell recruited Donald DeFreeze to work for the Public Disorder Intelligence Unit, of the CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section, LAPD). Its purpose was to monitor black political activities in California. Karenga worked with DeFreeze and the LAPD, as part of a "fuck-fuck unit," running guns to various black militant groups, hoping to set off a gang war between the Black Panthers and the US Organization.

US member Melvin Cotton Smith helped set up Black Panther busts for the police. The Steiner brothers, working with Karenga and the LAPD, killed Panther leaders John Huggins and Alpretnice Carter at UCLA.

Members of Karenga's group were at Vacaville with DeFreeze.
http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Why%20Was%20Hearst%20Kidnapped%201.html
Prison
"In 1971 Karenga, Louis Smith, and Luz Maria Tamayo were convicted of felony assault and false imprisonment for assaulting and torturing two women from the United Slaves, Deborah Jones & Gail Davis. [5] A May 14, 1971 article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of the women: "Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. ... "
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/ron%20karenga%20-%20time%20in%20prison/id/5282791

•••

THE INTELLIGENCE ORIGINS OF KWANZAA By Brother Sekhem—2006

FOREWORD:

This is the season known as Kwanzaa, and at this time, I believe it's necessary to reveal the origin of this holiday that was given to us. Our enemies love Kwanzaa, love to see us engaged in its practice and have no qualms in promoting it bigger than life throughout the media. TV news shows around the United Hates… oops, I mean States, go out of their way to advance Kwanzaa, not because they want to, but because they’ve been instructed to. No other festivity or pro-Afrikan day is promoted this way except for Martin Luther King Day. Why is that?

Why do these media propaganda venues need us to believe in it so badly?

Why does the anti-black sociopath Bush and every other president from Reagan on, take the time to acknowledge Kwanzaa every year?

The answers might be that they want Christmas to be a largely white event, and want to take it back for themselves. But that would be self-defeating for them economically, and they are slowly losing their own economic base in Christmas, due to outright greed and over commercialization. So the answer must reside in the fact our enemies want to:

A) Market a new commercial endeavor called Kwanzaa that acts as a black Christmas to siphon money from Afrikan people during a critical time of year of resource consolidation for the enemy.

B) Promote an American agenda that ultimately serves their interests, and props up a long-standing asset while internally subverting genuine Afrikan goals and aspirations through their loyal dog Ron “Maulana” Karenga.

C) Enable corporations to make millions of dollars off greeting card sales, books, candles, gifts and assorted Kwanzaa accessories, that we see neither a dime, nor benefit as a people from.

In the process of exposing this, I want to proclaim in advance, my support for the progressive Afrikan principles of Kwanzaa. As I do believe that they can be very transformative, and of critical use towards the advancement of global Afrikan unity and liberation. What I have a serious problem with, is it's amalgamation of Christmas and Hanukkah into a "new" holiday that perpetuates a financial war against our people. As the funds gained during this time are gathered in a war chest, destined for use in campaigns and initiatives to enslave, murder and destroy our objectives of Afrikan progression.

THE WAR CONTINUES

During the era of 1969-1972 a large-scale politicization of prisons throughout the U.S. flourished, particularly in California, and was causing the enemy no end of problems. Led by the writings of Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Marcus Garvey, Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Mihn, Afrikan prisoners in particular, were becoming conscious of themselves as prisoners in a larger war against our race. As a result the imprisoned Afrikans began to organize, study and compose creative pro-Afrikan ideas, writings and works assert their natural human rights, unify as a force and drop systematic self-destructive behavior. This widespread organization was the beginning of what was to known as the powerful Prisoner’s Rights Movement. The success of this Prisoner’s Movement began to spread like wildfire throughout prison systems in the U.S. and as far as the UK. It even crossed racial lines, as Latinos, Native peoples, Asians and even whites started to support and emulate this bold new dynamic and to target our common enemy.

In response to this perceived threat, the CIA, FBI and coordinated military intelligence groups (Office of Naval Intelligence and Army Intelligence in particular) and engaged in several operational initiatives of murder, sabotage and destruction. Jonathan Jackson and his brother George were set up and murdered, prison race gangs (Black Guerilla Family, Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia, La Nuestra Familia, etc.) were encouraged, assisted and fostered to target and kill political prisoners, and progressive groups within the prisons. These elements were funded and used to spread death, drugs and criminal mayhem as a move to destroy the gains of the Prisoner’s Movement. Snitches and all manner of provocateurs were cultivated, trained and inserted amongst the revolutionary prisoners and groups. Division Five in concert with other departments of the FBI, specifically set-up and bad-jacketed/snitch-jacketed targeted prisoners for inmate incited hostilities and murder. Later, in the case of the revolutionary Attica uprising, the Prisoner’s Movement was violently suppressed on personal orders from Nelson Rockefeller, with scores of prisoners brutally beaten, tortured and murdered as examples to others in and out of the penal system.

The strength of the Prisoner’s Rights Movement was born out of imprisoned Afrikans consciously transforming themselves into revolutionary Afrikan warriors to serve the people. Their successes were noted and the CIA, in concert with Division Five of the FBI, the Stanford Research Institute, the California Bureau of Prisons, and the LAPD’s CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section, organized a project known as The Black Cultural Association (BCA). The BCA was a specific behavior modification and psychological experimentation unit housed within the California State Prison and Medical Facility at Vacaville. Funding and direction for the BCA came from the CIA via the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) as well as the LEAA (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice). The cover story was "the development of black pride" for the Afrikan prisoners. Heading up this department was a psychotic house **** by the name of Colton Westbrook. Westbrook came from a U.S. Army background as a specialist in Psychological Warfare and Terror Ops for the CIA's Phoenix Project in Southeast Asia. Westbrook provided logistical support for CIA’s Phoenix Program and his particular job was the indoctrination of assassination and terrorist cadres also known as synthetic terror groups or pseudo-gangs. The Phoenix Project was a sustained policy of political assassinations, rigged elections, outright terror campaigns against civilians, political imprisonment in American-made tiger cages, torture and Psy Ops propaganda by CIA agents. CIA Director William Colby promised at his Senate confirmation hearings in July 1973 that he would curb the CIA's activities at home and abroad. Instead, he has imported the Phoenix Program directly into the United States.

A career CIA man, Westbrook worked under cover with A.I.D. (the Agency for International Development). Handling undercover black ops assignments throughout Cambodia, Thailand, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Okinawa and Soviet Union. He later went on to supervising the CIA’s drug operations throughout Asia before finally being summoned to establish and direct the BCA at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville (a psychiatric state prison) in California. The California Medical Facility at Vacaville in actuality housed the Maximum Psychiatric Diagnostic Unit, or MPDU. This MPDU’s function was to receive and “treat” the worst "troublemakers" from prisons throughout the state. Westbrook adopted the name "Yajiuma" as part of his cover and then inserted his "pro-Afrikan" group, the Black Cultural Association into the inmate population. Westbrook/Yajiuma set about creating the BCA as honeypot to attract Afrikans who fit a specific psychological profile under the auspices of a cultural haven and pro-black self-development center. Under Project MKSEARCH, the Stanford Research Institute and CIA Research and Development programs worked with drugs such as Librium, and Magnesium Pemoline, which were administered illegally to certain BCA members at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. Westbrook's assignment in the Black Cultural Association behavior modification unit was to recruit future agents for CIA domestic intelligence programs. Seemingly random killings, assassinations, and operations such as the Zebra murders in San Francisco, are linked to this prison control and training, through the imposition of mind-altering drugs, psycho-surgeries, chemo-surgeries, use of electric shock and electrode implants, and mind control programming such as Clear Eyes assassin training. The code-named "Zebra" killings (so-called by police because the crimes involved black on white crimes) took place in San Francisco during a six-month period from 1973 to 1974 and occurred during the time of CIA/FBI involvement in Vacaville and COINTELPRO operations in California. The murder spree involved shootings, stabbings, and hackings with machetes and was running roughly concurrent to the time that the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) was active. The crimes were allegedly perpetrated by so-called American Black Muslims motivated by "revenge on the white race". Given the history of such tactics as the use of disinformation and smear campaigns against "subversive" groups, it is possible that this was also part of a CIA/FBI project to discredit the Muslim movement in America, and that the murders were said to have been committed by whites in black face make-up. For a 179-day period, the "Zebra" killers brutally assaulted, robbed, and sodomized a total of twenty-three persons, leaving fifteen dead. Also running concurrently was the string of occult connected murders attributed to a so-called maniac dubbed the Zodiac Killer. Compelling new evidence reveals that this too was a coordinated part of the U.S. intelligence agencies’ synthetic terror operations, and that the “Zodiac Killer” was actually Team Zodiac. A terror squad composed of satanic cult organized killers and patsies, very much like the ones they established within the Manson Family and Son of Sam terror teams.

Colton Westbrook, working with the LAPD's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and Division Five of the FBI, used certain newly "Africanized" and modified recruits to set up two primary synthetic terror groups known as the Us organization with police agent Ron N. Everett a.k.a. Ron Karenga; and the SLA, or Symbionese Liberation Army with police informer and provocateur Donald DeFreeze. According to CCS police snitch and provocateur Louis Tackwood, Ron Karenga and his Us (later known as the United Slaves) organization were funded by the Ford Foundation, the LAPD and his good friend Mayor Sam Yorty through municipal funds. Financing to the tune of over $50,000 per year, plus two offices and five apartments, as indicated in the September 6, 1969 edition of the Black Panther newspaper. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Karenga “Maintained close ties to the eastern Rockefeller family” and that “A few weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King… Mr. Karenga slipped into Sacramento for a private chat with Governor Ronald Reagan, at the governor’s request. The black nationalist also met clandestinely with Los Angeles Police Chief Thomas Reddin after King had been killed.”

Louis E. Tackwood was the liaison man between Karenga and DeFreeze and LAPD's CCS division. Aptly named, the Criminal Conspiracy Section's sole purpose and agenda was to target and destroy black militants and their organizations, through conspiracies involving informers, agent provocateurs, programmed assassins and set-up men. As well as "militant" synthetic terror groups to sabotage and discredit the Afrikan liberation movement in general. Through Tackwood, Ron Karenga and his United Slaves (we should've known they were punks by their ******* name alone!) were given their assignments to "Work in opposition to other Black groups within the Black community, which attracted large numbers of Blacks." Karenga was directly ordered to “Curtail the Panther Party’s growth, no matter what the cost, and that no rang-a-tang (CCS slang for US members) —that’s what we called his people— would ever be convicted of murder.” Tackwood also stated that he provided Karenga with assassination orders from the FBI to kill Panther leaders Elmore Geronimo Pratt, and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter.

Why target Carter?

The Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party was formed in 1968 by Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter. Carter was the former head of the 5,000-strong Slauson gang and its hard-core unit, the Slauson Renegades, and was known in the area as "the Mayor of the Ghetto". While spending four years in Soledad prison on charges of armed robbery, he became a Muslim and a follower of Malcolm X. In 1967, Carter met Black Panther Party Minister of Defense Huey Newton and immediately became a Panther on the spot. Newton recognized Carter's formidable organization and leadership skills and tasked him with forming and leading the Southern California BPP chapter. In early 1968, he was given the revolutionary position of Deputy Minister of Defense.

On January 17, 1969, Jerome Huggins, 23 and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter 26, were gunned down by Karenga’s men, George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner, Harold Jones, Donald Hawkins and the triggerman Claude "Chuchessa" Hubert. Larry Stiner was wounded in the shoulder from a shot squeezed off by Alprentice Carter, and three of them made their way back to the get-away car driven by their FBI handler Brandon Cleary also known to them as Control One. According to a police agent code-named Othello (most likely either D’Arthard Perry, a.k.a. Ed Riggs or Louis E. Tackwood), Cleary drove three of the assassins back to the FBI building in Los Angeles, where they met in a 14th floor office for debriefing. The FBI then facilitated gunman Claude Hubert’s escape as Hubert was subsequently transferred to an east coast office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in New York City. Hubert has never been apprehended and is believed to be currently living under Bureau cover. As for the Stiner brothers, they were ordered to turn themselves into police whereupon the Bureau would assist them when things quieted down. After their reported surrender, the Stiner brothers were tried and convicted of the murders of Carter and Huggins. They were sentenced to San Quentin, a maximum-security prison. Four years later, as "model prisoners", the two were transferred to the minimum-security section of the prison. The FBI made good on their promise and facilitated their escape in 1974, during a conjugal visit arranged for both. Aided by a black prison guard the two were literally allowed to just walk off, and their handlers in the FBI assisted in providing them safe transit and haven in Guyana, South America. One has to wonder what Larry Stiner knows, and if his services were utilized further in nearby Jonestown, as he was in Guyana during that time. His brother George eventually left Guyana, and his current whereabouts are an FBI secret. Larry however, changed his name to Watani, married, and moved to neighboring Suriname. After civil conflicts threatened his family and great new life, he called his handlers with a request to return to the United States in exchange for granting political asylum for his family. This scumbag traitor and FBI snitch returned in 1994 and was double-crossed by his masters, who arranged for him to finish out his life sentence.

Who was Othello?

Depending on sources, he was either D’Arthard Perry, a.k.a. Ed Riggs, or Louis E. Tackwood. From 1968 to 1975 he was a paid undercover operative for the FBI and committed many of the crimes that the congressional committees and the Justice Department failed to uncover. Othello was the code name given to him by the FBI, who ultimately became so pleased with his performance they gave Othello $2,400 a month in cash payments and expenses, making him one of the bureau's highest-paid (and therefore one of its most valued) operatives. As FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act years later revealed, there were at least 295 FBI operations against black groups up to year 1971; of that total, 233 were specific operations launched against the Black Panthers. The Bureau wound up spending an estimated $7,400,000—much of it on operatives like Othello—and informants and undercover men to wreck the organization. That amount is about double what the FBI was spending to obtain information about organized crime.

Meanwhile back at California Medical Facility at Vacaville …

A covert mind control unit with funding from the CIA channeled through the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). These Menlo Park behavior modification specialists experimented with psychoactive drugs administered to members of the BCA. Black prisoners were programmed to murder selected black leaders once on the outside. The CIA/SRI zombie killer hit list included Oakland school superintendent Dr. Marcus Foster, and Panthers Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, among others.

Working with some white CIA associates; Westbrook was now very busy mobilizing his BCA hypno-soldiers into a violent para-military synthetic terror group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Amongst them a pathetic loser named Donald DeFreeze stood out. From 1967 to 1969, he worked as a police informer for the Los Angeles Police Department, under Detective R. G. Farwell, Public Disorder Intelligence unit. At the time, the LAPD was supplying weapons to independent black agents and the United Slaves (US), hiring them to specifically kill Black Panthers. DeFreeze worked closely with police agent provocateur Ron Karenga, head of the US organization. Later, other members of Karenga's group were programmed at California Medical Facility at Vacaville with DeFreeze. DeFreeze stated that at Vacaville in 1971-72 he was the subject of a CIA mind-control experiments. He described his incarceration on the prison's third floor, where he was corralled by CIA agents who drugged him and said he would become the leader of a radical movement and kidnap a wealthy person. Prior to Vacaville, nothing in DeFreeze's background indicated a political consciousness while he worked as a police intelligence informer. Shortly after his arranged escape from Vacaville (an exit door was left unlocked for him), that's exactly what he did, following his programming on cue.

Colton Westbrook co-opted the works and revolutionary writings of the genuine Afrikan Prisoners Movement, and incorporated them into the teachings of the BCA. DeFreeze, his star pupil, was even allowed to set up a sub-group called Unisight to refine his programmed leadership role in the Symbionese Liberation Army. Earlier, Westbrook had invented Ron Karenga’s United Slaves logo with the seven-headed cobra, along with accompanying Swahili principles incorporating each head:
Umoja

Kujichagulia

Ujima

Ujamaa

Nia

Kuumba

Imani
You may know these now as the 7 Principles of Kwanzaa.
After Karenga’s conviction and the US (United Slaves) were no longer of any practical military or intelligence use. Colton Westbrook revamped the United Slaves seven-headed cobra and principles, and grafted them onto his new group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). DeFreeze who now changed his name to Cinque, or Cin, would be the leader of the group who consisted of 5 white intelligence assets and negro operative named Thero Wheeler. Wheeler met DeFreeze earlier, when they were both prisoners at Vacaville in 1972, and Wheeler was placed as an inside handler to manipulate both DeFreeze/Cinque and the rest of the SLA. Thero Wheeler was later transferred to San Quentin and to facilitate his activation in the SLA, he too was allowed to just walk away from his imprisonment in August of 1973.

Another unusual development with intelligence connections, was the sudden appearance of a man by the name of Bernard Keaton who was secured as an actual double for Donald DeFreeze. Keaton surfaced in spring, of 1973, after DeFreeze walked away from Soledad and claimed to be Donald DeFreeze. As cover, Keaton moved in with DeFreeze family friend Reverend W. Foster and family, in Buffalo, New York. Keaton's impersonation was so good, that he was even familiar with intimate details of the family history that only DeFreeze could have known about. The only reason for having Keaton as a double was in case law enforcement officers in the Bay area had accidentally picked up DeFreeze during the time between his "escape" from Soledad and the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst. Then if necessary, his double could have taken his place in prison. Three long-years had gone into training DeFreeze for his mission while at Vacaville Medical Facility, and it couldn’t afford to be jeopardized. Later when the FBI was challenged about Bernard Keaton being DeFreeze’s double, the FBI stated they are not concerned or even curious about him and stated that it "isn't illegal."

When the CIA/FBI/CCS decided that the SLA had outlived its usefulness, and DeFreeze's programming was coming apart more and more. Their terror group the SLA needed to be publicly eliminated. Wayne Lewis, an FBI agent provocateur, reported that the FBI had asked him to replace DeFreeze 2 weeks before DeFreeze’s death because "the FBI was going to kill him." The police and the FBI, then carefully arranged for their select operatives Thero Wheeler, Emily and William Harris and Patricia Hearst to be secreted out to safety, and surrounded the SLA’s safe house. As soon as Thero Wheeler and another negro punk made sure the others remained in the house for sacrifice, the clean-up operation began in earnest. Agent Donald Gray of the FBI shot DeFreeze in the back from a position just outside the house. Then a fusillade of bullets were fired into the house and the structure set ablaze on national TV. DeFreeze and 5 other SLA members were calculatingly incinerated, along with any telling and critical evidence. The LAPD did not notify DeFreeze's family of his death for three days. His remains were sent to them in Cleveland, Ohio, with both the head and the fingers missing. I can only imagine that if a proper and thorough autopsy were performed specifically on the brain tissues, it would have revealed evidence of any chemo-surgeries, physical surgeries, psychoactive chemical residue and/or electrode experimentation. It was either that, or the body they had was actually Bernard Keaton the double for DeFreeze. It was alleged that directly after the clean-up operation, the CIA demanded possession of DeFreeze’s head. ...

Ron Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment. For his role in the imprisonment and grievous torture of two Afrikan women named Deborah Jones and Gail Davis. A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen. Said that on May 9, 1970, she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said." Additional evidence and testimony surfaced that indicated that the following day, Karenga allegedly told the women “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know” (CIA torture lessons from Westbrook and the Phoenix Project no doubt). One of two cohorts, Luz Maria Tamayo reportedly put detergent and a caustic substance in the women’s’ mouths, and the other, Louis Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, with Karenga, holding a gun, and threatening to shoot both of them (Jones & Davis)." Karenga was also found to have burned Davis and Jones with lit cigarettes and inserted a water hose into them (their vaginas) and sadistically forced cold and alternately very hot water into them.

Seeing that this could lead to a real stretch in a real prison, Karenga didn’t want to do hard time in a regular prison, so he feigned insanity and beseeched his covert masters for their help. Quoting from a transcript of Karenga's sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971: “A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from a psychiatrist's report: "Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell.” “… During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating that there was someone there and implying indirectly that the 'someone' was a woman imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment."

Either he was faking for a reduced sentence, or some BCA programming was going haywire. In any event he was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971, to serve one to ten years in California State Prison named "California Men's Colony", in San Luis Obispo, California. His handlers stepped in once again and he was later transferred to—get this… the California Medical Facility at Vacaville (for possible de-programming or re-programming?). Brother Spartacus of GAP Radio asserts that it’s possible that Karenga may have never even served the sentence in the prison at all. And that his masters in the FBI may have arranged for fake prison records to be generated at the facility of his alleged prison term. Which is something to ponder, considering how valuable he WAS to them then, and IS to them now. Since then, the FBI’s Anti-Afrikan COINTELPRO strategy continued uninterrupted, and has been expanded and instituted globally with new names such as TOPLEV, COMTEL and THERMCON.

A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the following day. That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention Karenga's unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people. After that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict him as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.

Karenga was released a scant 3 years later in 1974, and his handlers in the CIA and FBI set him up to be Chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University. Now named Professor Maulana (Master teacher) Karenga, He later resurfaced with the resurrected SLA principles and dubbed them the 7 Principles of Kwanzaa complete with an Africanized Hanukkah menorah called the Kinara. His handlers in the FBI thought that this would serve a two-fold purpose of the establishing and marketing a synthetic African holiday with a convoluted African origin, that would serve their financial agenda as an alternative Christmas marketed directly to black people. And two, to give their valued operative with a new cover for a re-insertion into the Afrikan community. Primarily for intelligence gathering, gate-keeping and an assumed leadership role with complete absolution of his crimes against the Afrikan masses. That, in addition to the great laughter they enjoy watching us sanctify a sick, sadistic, predator of Afrikan people. A vile tool who delights in the continued destruction of our liberation. But let’s hear from the man Karenga himself talking candidly in a May 9, 1978 article from the Washington Post: "People think it's African, but it's not". He continued, "I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that's when a lot of bloods (young black people) would be partying."

We need to make a revolutionary choice at this point, and either continue celebrating a holiday given to us by our enemies. A holiday that amalgamates Christmas and Hanukkah, with a synthetic African characteristic, inserted strategically for seven days right after Christmas.

Kwanzaa was an Afrikan Trojan Horse to continue an un-official celebration of the Christmas season, and redirect our hard-earned money back into the enemy’s coffers. To depart a legend and give absolution to a traitor Afrikan masses should have judged and gave a death sentence for crimes against Afrikan people and our struggle. Kwanzaa is now as commercially viable a commodity as Christmas, generating millions in greeting-card sales alone. "It's clear that a number of major corporations have started to take notice and try to profit from Kwanzaa," said a San Francisco State Black studies professor Oba T'Shaka.

Let’s stand as one, and salvage the good from Kwanzaa, then give it a burial and develop our OWN day that Afrikans around the world can look up to in pride and united celebration. A day that serves OUR collective interests, and enriches the revolutionary traditions of OUR race. A day that our enemies will revile. A day that frees us from their shallow trappings and venal exploitations.

Sources:

The SLA is CIA and varied works of Mae Brussell

The SLA by Mae Brussell

Agents of Repression by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall

The Glass House Tapes by Louis Tackwood

The Black Panther newspaper - September 6, 1969

Muhammad Speaks – November 12, 1971

Bitter Grain Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party by Michael Newton

FrontPage Magazine.com - Happy Kwanzaa by Paul Mulshine

The Ultimate Evil by Maury Terry

http://www.runboard.com/blibradio.f5.t87

•••

'Kwanzaa Ain't No Good Thing' Black Journalist Admits

http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/264192
I live in an area where the population is 50% African American. So I assumed there would be Kwanzaa celebrations here. To find out more about it I spoke with Randy Stelly, a Creole businessman and publisher of a newspaper called The Real Views, that I have been associated with for several years. I asked Randy if he celebrated Kwanza and if so, how he was doing it so I could pass that along to readers. I assumed good things about it so I wasn’t prepared for Randy's reply.
His eyes narrowed and brows furrowed, Randy looked earnestly at me and said, “First of all, remember that black folks are no more homogeneous than white folks so don’t assume we all celebrate Kwanzaa. It isn’t part of my tradition. And I think if people really knew what was behind it and how it began, it wouldn't be celebrated by anybody except those who just want to be stupid. I can tell you a lot about it because it’s important. That’s because I think folks shouldn’t side with something that was built on a history of intimidation and violence.”
I was curious since intimidation and violence aren’t words associated with Kwanzaa images. I wondered, as many people might, how could Kwanzaa could be anything but good. So my eyes were opened as I listened to Randy talk about his California experience, in the black power movement of the 1960’s. Randy knew some of the Black Panther members, since he was always interested in politics and the news. He was never a member of any black extremist group but had the journalist’s inquiring mind. That led him to getting involved with a number of people back then who figured prominently in the development of the “black identity.”
Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, and Mohammad X were familiar names to me since I was a young adult at the time. These folks were described by the media in the 60's as the more outwardly demonstrative, somewhat aggressive, always assertive, members of “the movement.” There were other names, however, that I hadn't known, names like Ron Karenga and Geronimo Pratt. And that's where Randy's story started--leading me to find out about these characters, to learn more about Kwanzaa’s founder and whether his life reflected the teachings of the holiday he initiated.
Mr. Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa, has quite a past. Randy told me that Karenga had been the head of the opposition party on the campus of UCLA, struggling against the Black Panthers for control of the black movement in the area. He went on to tell me that a group called Cointelpro, connected with the FBI and the government, got involved with that opposition group which called itself US, a euphemism for United Slaves. Research supports that Randy’s narrative to be right..
Karenga, born July 14, 1941 according a resource on the Internet, has been also referred to by the title “Maulana” which means “master teacher” in Arabic and Swahili. Kwanzaa was founded by Karenga with the first observed celebration in California from December 26 until January 1, 1967. Four years later Karenga was convicted of felony assault for having kidnapped and tortured two of US female members.
Randy recalled that at the time Karenga was rumored to have a particular dislike of black women. A Los Angles Time article on his trial dated May 14, 1971 summarized the testimony of one of the women: “Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Ms. Davis's mouth and placed against Ms. Davis's face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.” They also were hit on the heads with toasters.
During Karenga's trial there were questions about his sanity. He was described by a psychiatrist as someone who “represents a picture that can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization and impaired contact with the environment.” Yet in spite of his criminal acts, for which he was prosecuted, found guilty and imprisoned until 1975, and his questionable sanity, Karenga has become the symbol of the importance of family, community and culture in the holiday known as Kwanzaa.
The idea that Ron Karenga is associated with a recognized holiday is ironic to Randy Stelly because he sees it as a made-up holiday by Karenga to establish black identity through ties to Africa. In fact Karenga, in his treatise The Quotable Karenga, has detailed the sevenfold path of blackness to think black, talk black, act black, creat black, buy black vote black and live black.”
After leaving prison Karenga went on to obtain two doctoral degrees, became head of the Black Studies Department at California State University, where he toned down his speech but continued to espouse black alternatives to mainstream experiences. The Kwanzaa Information Center states, 'red, or the blood, stands as the top of all things. We lost our land through blood; and we cannot gain it except through blood. We must redeem our lives through the blood. Without the shedding of blood there can be no redemption of this race.' The Information Center also observes that the flag is a symbol of devotion for African American people to create an independent African nation on the North American continent.
Randy notes that we have all seen the result of separatism and extremism in the world and throughout our own United States history. Such movements, bred in violence, continually breed violence, even within its own members, as occurred during the time of the rise of the Black Panthers and US, when people were condemned, tortured and killed. Such views have no place in the world of God and should be discarded.
That’s one man’s opinion but one that clarified enough for me not to be politically correct about Kwanzaa.
Additional References
References: Scholer, J. Lawrence, “The Story of Kwaanza,” The Dartmouth Review, Monday, January 15, 2001. Mulshine, Paul “Happy Kwanzaa,” , FrontPageMagazine.com, December 26, 2002. Snow, Tony, “The Truth About Kwanzaa,”Jewish World Review, December 31, 1999.

•••

Dutch Kwanzaa follower calls Obama 'a nigger in charge'
A leading member of the Amsterdam Kwanzaa movement and radio personality Wensley Burleson with the Black Community Broadcasting group has been banned from the airwaves over his racist comments and hate
The Amsterdam city council broadcasting commission (Salto) banned his two-hour programme after local town councillors lodged charges of antisemitism against him.
His "No Limits' broadcast time - on Sundays -- was taken off the air until the investigation is completed. The BCB presents itself on the air as 'a radio station which is only for blacks who support black-consciousness'.
At an earlier harvest celebration of Kwanzaa in Amsterdam, Burleson also was widely reported in the news media as describing then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and black Amsterdam city councillor Laetitia Griffith as 'the niggers in charge, with the white master determining who will be in charge.'
Burleson, is accused of delivering racist diatribes on the air in which he blames "the Jews' for inciting slavery, referred to local town councillors Jerry Straub and Peter Bals as nazis and said all Hindus were 'hindu-nazis'.

He also described black women as 'weak', referred to Dutch Labour Party MP Jeroen Dijsselbloem as a 'concentration camp guard' and said that Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen 'used the identical language uttered by (Adolph) Hitler.' see
Some thirty members from the large Suriname community in Amsterdam showed up to support him at a press conference held by Burleson at the local café Shaquil. They said they all were members of the Kwanzaa movement. see
Refuses to speak to white journalists:
Burleson refused to speak to any white journalists at the press conference -- calling them the 'white supremacy press' and accusing the Amsterdam news media of 'portraying him as a racist.
"The news media is the enemy. Don't ever talk to the white-supremacy press.'
Director Rudolf Buurma of Salto said 'the BCB programme was barred from the airwaves because it does not fit into the context of our community broadcasting system.We do want to broadcast all the alternative viewpoints from all four compass points. However, this particular broadcast by Burleson was extraordinarily antisemitic. And when people start using such hate-speech against other race groups, it also brings Salto in disrepute.'
BCB declines to respond as they are still conferring with a lawyer about the matter, their spokesman said.
Burleson - a leading member of the Kwanzaa movement in Amsterdam -- was banned from Salto radio broadcasts before. Early in 2007, he said in a Radio SouthEast broadcast that black liberal city councillor Laetitia Griffith was a 'nigger in charge', i.e. a black who was 'granted permission from the white master to act as manager.' He has also referred to President Barack Obama in the same way, and refers to the Roman-Catholic religion as 'homophile and criminal'.
Burleson - who lives in the Amsterdam highrise suburb De Bijlmer and used to work there as an integration councillor for the Amsterdam town council -- now rejects this programme, which encourages all new residents to fully integrate into Dutch society, including learning Dutch and educating their children in the public school system.
Buurma and the board of Salto are now trying to find a way to prevent a repeat of broadcasting such racist outbursts in future, Dutch daily Het Parool reports."We now have examples in hand of which we can definitely say that 'this had gone too far'.

Event canceled

2010-11-18T02:42:00.000-05:00

In 5 years I've never cancelled an Ashra Kwesi event. Due to a family emergency, I must reschedule this event to a later date. Everyone please inform the community. Baba is okay with this and actually recommended this before I did. That's much more than what I can say for some other elder brothers.

MDW NTR CLASS BY MUKASA AFRIKA MA'AT (ON-LINE)

2010-09-24T11:21:00.001-04:00

Htp, Ankh Wajah Djed
Ankh Wajah Snb

I'm excited. I just noticed how broad my website and blogs are reaching. Just last week, I had readers from at least a dozen countries around the world visit this one blog. I might have as many as 50 readers from various countries in a week. I have readers in Brazil, Ghana, Canada, the UK - even India and China. With this type of growing base, I can offer my upcoming MDW NTR class online if I have enough people interested. For those not in Philly who would like to learn MDW NTR, this is your opportunity - no costs except the purchase of your books. The class will deal with the language and literature of KMT (Ancient Egypt), the history, culture, and spirituality of the Nile will provide proper context in understanding the civilization. The required and recommended texts will be the latest works in MDW NTR grammar and the classic works on the literature and history of KMT (Kemet/Tawi). So if you're interested in this soon to be very enlightening experience, or if you'd like to see the class with an on-line component, send me feedback on this blog, facebook, or at spirits360@yahoo.com
Baba Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
http://www.mukasa.info/
rdi dwa

Mdw Ntr Class - Language, History, Culture of Kemet (Ancient Egypt)

2010-09-18T14:26:00.000-04:00

Hotep, Ankh, Wadjah, Djed:

I will be teaching a Saturday, Afrikan-Centered, Mdw Ntr class at Kheper-Ra Charter School in Philly. The class will delve deep into the language and literature of KMT (Ancient Egypt). We will study the development, grammar, culture, and worldview of Mdw Ntr (Divine Speech). We will expand our vocabulary of Mdw Ntr and learn about the great literary masterpieces produced by these Afrikans along the Nile Valley. There will be lots of handouts and exercises with on-hands support in deciphering/translating and transliterating. The class will be geared towards parents, teachers, students, and interested researchers. Afrikan-Centered educators will find a wealth of information and resources on the language and literature of KMT. Parents will find ways to culturally infuse their home environment. All will find that their is much to gain in Mdw Ntr.

Continental Drift - A local teacher promotes Tut's African identity by Kia Gregory

2010-07-20T10:27:00.000-04:00

Continental Drift
A local teacher promotes Tut's African identity.
By Kia Gregory Add Comment
Posted Aug. 8, 2007

Race matters: Mukasa Afrika will protest the Tut exhibit Saturday to bring attention to oy king's African heritathe bge.

For Mukasa Afrika, it's another blow in a continuing assault.
In June 2005 National Geographic magazine featured the reconstructed image of King Tutankhamen on its cover. The headline read: "THE NEW FACE OF KING TUT." The young pharaoh had light eyes, a pointy nose, thin lips and a golden caramel hue.
In the search for King Tut's true identity, scientists in France, the U.S. and Egypt conducted three separate reconstructions that yielded three different kings: one Caucasian, one African and one Afrika mockingly calls "Arab-Caucasoid."
It's this one, reconstructed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt under the leadership of Dr. Zahi Hawass, whom Afrika accuses of constantly excising Egypt from Africa, that has become famous, and is now on display at the Franklin Institute Science Museum, the final stop on the king's current U.S. tour.
Afrika, 32, tells stories from African history and culture with the ease with which most people discuss last night's American Idol. He speaks in the slow, assured manner of someone twice his age, and there's no doubt in his mind the boy king was African.
"The mummy itself is evidence that King Tut is African," he says. He adds that paintings found in king's tomb show he had deep brown skin. Also the king's 18th dynasty descends from Thebes, located in the southern part of Egypt, making his family lineage African. He also points to the famous golden mask in which the king has almond-shaped eyes, a rounded nose and full lips.
The image on the cover of National Geographic was created with CAT scans, and according to the museum's website, a forensic anthropologist measured the mummy's cranial features to calculate the tissue depth of his nose, cheeks and lips. Then a paleo-artist determined the skin color based on the middle range of contemporary North Africans.
Afrika says that analysis is intentionally flawed.
He questions why scientists didn't use a melanin dosage test or a DNA test for a truer picture of King Tut's African identity.
"It's more about money than racism," Afrika says of the museum's "Golden Age" exhibit. "If they had an image of an African King Tut, how many fewer tickets would they sell? That's a question they don't wanna deal with."
After seeing the magazine cover, Afrika, through the Laying the Foundation organization, built a website, wrote essays, held workshops and hosted scholars to educate the public on the king's true identity. And when the King Tut exhibit came to the Franklin Institute, he, along with many community activists, stood in front of the museum's steps in protest.
This Saturday he'll do it again. And this time he and a coalition of groups will have demands for the Franklin Institute: to make a public apology for not properly representing King Tut as African; to develop and display a historical, factual and scientific exhibit of the African foundation and its contributions; to display the pioneering accomplishments of the African Nile Valley civilization in education, architecture, social organization, art and industry; to document and display the research and accomplishments of Cheikh Anta Diop in scientifically proving Egypt was indeed an African civilization.
"We must send a message," says Afrika, "that as people of African descent, we will not tolerate or accept the misrepresentation of our culture and history. We will send that message from the schools all the way to Egypt that we know King Tut was African."
Afrika's motivation isn't purely academic.
"African history saved my life," he says. "And it's destined to do the same for our people."
Afrika grew up on the poor side of Chicago, as he says, a very troubled teenager.
"I was one of these teenagers running the streets with my pants hanging down, not listening to my parents, getting into trouble with the law," he remembers. "Growing up without a sense of purpose, I got involved in a lot of things I shouldn't have been involved in," like gangs and drugs.
As Afrika puts it, he was wasting his existence.
"It's when I started to read about African history that I began to have a sense of purpose," he says. "So I know the power of these things personally, and as a teacher, I've seen it 100 times over. When history isn't simply a subject you get a grade in, but a part of your identity and culture, it's a powerful thing."
After getting kicked out of high school, Afrika eventually graduated, then he went off to college, where he majored in black studies. Now, in addition to being an elementary school teacher, he's also an author, lecturer and activist. And he refuses to accept that King Tut was anything but black.
"The consequences are very grave," he says of the museum's exhibit. "You're dealing with a people whose history has been stolen, people who have been deprived of their historical and cultural memory. If you take away a person's culture, you take away who they are. We can't afford to lose any more because so much has already been taken.
"We're not going to Greece and saying Alex the Great was African. We just want ours. Give us ours, and we'll be satisfied."

Teachings from Ancient Afrikan Nile Valley Texts by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2010-07-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

Teachings from Ancient Afrikan Nile Valley Texts
on
The Intergenerational Transmission of
Wisdom, Culture, and Spirituality

Mukasa Afrika Ma'at:

Author, Lecturer, Historian, Activist

AFRIKA PUBLICATIONS PO Box 3447 Philadelphia , PA 19101

215-520-7896
http://www.mukasa.info/ email: spirits360@yahoo.com
Copyright © 2008
All rights reserved.

This essay is dedicated to the memory, the work, and the spirit of the great Dr. Jacob Hudson Carruthers (Baba Jedi Shemsu Jehewty ) 1930 – 2004.

INTRODUCTION and HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the outset, notes on certain terms and concepts must be clarified. The first is the very name of the ancient nation which is the source of the writing that will be examined. In the modern day country, in Arabic, the country is called Misr from the dominate Arab population and culture descendant from those who colonized the land after the 639/640 invasion. The European world and European academia has selected to continue the name carried down from the Greeks, i.e. they call the country Egypt . Afrikan American scholars have in turn popularized one of the ancient names of the country – KMT or Kemet. Controversy surrounds the name KMT. White Egyptologists argue that it is a reference to the “black land,” meaning the color of the rich silt that was carried with the Nile inundation and left behind after the flood for good planting. Afrikan-Centered scholars and others argue that KMT is a racial name with reference to the people, making note of the fact that the land was populated predominately by people of Afrikan descent. The issue of definition is truly speculation either way and begs for study of the writing system. It could be of both, one or the other, or neither. Afrikan-Centered scholars need not rely on one word to prove that the Nile was an Afrikan civilization. Kmt was used very often in the papyrus writings and stories. If Kmt was the unofficial name of the country, Tawi was the official name.

We are clear that “Tawi” was used from the translations of the royal temple walls, in paintings, and art work. Tawi was often used in association with the Neb Tawi (Lord of the Two Lands). This usage was in association with the Nsw or Pharaoh. The ancient Afrikans called their land Tawi, meaning the Two Lands or the Upper and Lower Kingdoms which formed an Empire. The ancient Afrikans believed that the unity of Tawi (the Two Lands) was based on principles of righteousness and when the nation fell into chaos it was due to a lack thereof of righteousness. Thus, a return to righteousness (Ma'at) would restore peace in the nation. In using the term Tawi, most often it should be in reference to the period of Nile history when the Afrikan Pharaohs ruled the land or where at least fighting to unify it.

In mainstream academia the writing of Kmt/Tawi is called hieroglyphs, the name given to it by the Greeks which means sacred carvings. “Hieroglyph” does not capture the true essence of the significance of this ancient scriptural writing believed to emanate from the Great Divine. Mdw Ntr (Divine Speech) is the term that the ancient Afrikans of the Nile Valley gave to their oldest writing system. Language is not static. Languages change constantly and Mdw Ntr, written and spoken was no exception. Egyptologists have separated five phases of this 4,000 plus year old language. The phases are Old Egyptian, Classical/Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic (Allen, Middle Egyptian , 1). Additionally, throughout nearly the entire history of the written language there were several types of cursive – cursive hieroglyphs (used in “strictly” religious text), hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) being the broad branches. The Classical period text, written in hieratic, is the source of most of the written text which have survived to the present day.

The Mdw Ntr writing system of Tawi survived after the downfall of the civilization due to invasions by Persians, Greeks, and Romans. However, when Theodosius I in the 4 th century and other Roman Emperors issued edicts to forcibly convert their subjects over to Christianity, this meant the closing of Egyptian temples, the conversion of temples to churches, or their destruction. Adherence in Egypt to the ancient ways of Afrikan worship was now a crime, punishable even by death. The closing of Egyptian temples meant the continued decline of the culture and writing system.

For over the next 1,000 years, the world would not understand the mysteries of the once glorious land of Tawi (Kmt). Futile attempts were made to decipher the Mdw Ntr scrolls. The scholarly world did not understand the writings on the ancient monuments, but it was clear that the once grand old civilization had a very unique place in history. The 1798 Napoleonic invasion against the Ottoman Empire reopened the Afrikan civilization of Tawi to the scholarly world. Napoleon brought with him on the expedition researchers, scientists, and scholars. Their job – to dig up, copy, find, and record as much as they could about the glories of the past of this lost civilization. The Rosetta Stone was one of many discoveries which would lead to the decipherment of Mdw Ntr by Thomas Young and Jean Francios Champollion in 1822. The key to the decipherment is that the stone was written in hieroglyphs, demotic, and Greek. E.A. Wallis Budge would dedicate his life to translating innumerable texts from Mdw Ntr. The White Egyptologists of Europe and America would open new fields of studies and departments in all of the major universities. However, it was widely agreed that ancient Egypt was not an Afrikan civilization. Budge had noted in certain of his works that Egypt was an Afrikan civilization, the ancient Greeks stated that the Egyptians were Afrikans, and it was obvious enough from how the ancients depicted themselves. Nonetheless, the academic world viewed ancient Egypt as non-Afrikan.

More so than any single individual, Cheikh Anta Diop would restore the identity of Tawi to Afrika. The Senegalese scholar focused his scientific, linguistic, anthropological, and historical research and expertise on the Afrikan foundation and identity of Dynastic Tawi ( Egypt ). His works would fundamentally change the approach and perspective to Nile Valley studies: African Origin of Civilization, Cultural Unity of Black Africa , Civilization or Barbarism . His landmark presentation at the 1974 UNESCO is considered a turning point in the history of Nile Valley Studies where he unequivocally proved the Afrikan identity of Tawi (Kmt) among leading white Egyptologist.

The Afrikan intellectual movement would hinge on Diop through the efforts of two of his colleagues and supporters. In 1967 John Henrik Clarke met Diop in his laboratory and they discussed the global effort in the restoration of Nile Valley civilization to Afrikan history. After the meeting, and with the encouragement of the great Alioune Diop, Clarke spent seven years looking for American publishers to make the works of Diop available in English. Lawrence Hill would publish The African Origin of Civilization in 1974 ( Civilization or Barbarism , xv).

The second colleague and supporter who helped Diop influence a generation was Jacob Hudson Carruthers who met the Senegalese scholar in 1975 and again in 1976. Carruthers would often say that he received a mandate, a commission, from Diop to study Mdw Ntr in order to more fully understand the civilization of Tawi (Kmt). In the Fall of 1978, Carruthers and colleagues would found the Kemetic Institute of Chicago. Carruthers and others began promoting the teaching of Mdw Ntr and Nile Valley Studies in the Afrikan-Centered movement.

The 1990's saw heightened interest in Afrikan Nile Valley Studies. With the lose of pioneers such as Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, and Jacob Hudson Carruthers; and the illness of pioneers such as Ivan Van Sertima and Yosef ben-Jochannan – with the lessons of their contributions and a fresh look at the ancient texts, it is time we reassess our approach and orientation to Nile Valley Studies to consider new methodologies and applications.

In this presentation, I propose to highlight the three following major areas:

First, Afrikan-Centered academia must begin to develop competence and expertise in the Mdw Ntr (especially hieroglyphs and hieratic) in order to retranslate the ancient texts which have been translated over the last century by European Egyptologists. We must develop the grammatical works and dictionaries as resource tools to accomplish this major task that will take at least a generation. Prior to grappling with the major task, we can at least provide critical analysis of existing translations and new insights into the ancient texts.

Second, a central theme which must be examined emerges from the Sbayt of Ptah-Hotep, The Mdw Nfr of Khun-Inpu, the Tales of Sinuhe, the Prophecies of Neferti, and other texts. The theme is the intergenerational transmission of culture and spirituality. We must heighten exposure to these texts and build on their applications to the Afrikan worldview. A premise that will be highlighted in this essay is that in their translations and due to their Eurocentric university training, mainstream Egyptologists have butchered sacred Afrikan concepts found in Nile Valley texts.

Lastly, we must continue to recover the great Afrikan personalities and bring exposure to the scribes, the characters of the texts (once living or fictional), and highlight those Afrikans that built the civilization. Our historic task is not just re-education, but core paradigm shifting from European methodologies to the Afrikan worldview.

SBAYT

In the Afrikan Nile Valley texts considered in this essay, which all display the theme of sbayt (instruction), we shall consider the meaning and context of the concept. To grasp the meaning of sba, we consider a few of those texts here. In transliteration, sba is sb3 (see How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Collier and Manley).

The term is meant to convey the passage of sacred wisdom or Good Speech passed down over time, from generation to generation. Ptah-Hotep, in the text which centers around him which will be briefed shortly; he specifically asks for a servant, a “Staff of Old Age” to teach the ways of the past and carry on instruction. He himself was likely such a student. The Staff of Old Age was like the walking stick of the elder, used to lean on and get around. As a reward for providing assistance, the student would then, one day, become the instructor with the responsibility of carrying on wisdom.

In the Sbayt to Kagemni, at the end of the fragmented text, children are summoned, taught the words of sbayt, King Huni dies and becomes an ancestor while the new king Snefru is enthroned and Kagemni becomes what is often translated as Mayor or Overseer and Vizier. The positions of Kagemni are the same titles held by Ptah-Hotep, the Taty and Imy-r. Faulkner translates Taty as “the shrouded one” and Imy-r as overseer ( Dictionary of Middle Egyptian ). Both titles were highly significant in Tawi/Kmt as seen in the text of Rekmire who was Taty (Vizier) to Djhewty-Msu III and Amenhotep II. What is significant in this text is that an elder king dies while a new one is enthroned. The new Taty is put in place. Then, and finally, the children are taught the lessons passed down from their ancestors. This historical period marked the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, a high point in Nile Valley civilization. Sbayt yielded stability to the culture and to the nation as a whole.

One other text which we may gather meaning about the concept of Sbayt is that of Amenemhet I. Like Sbayt texts in general, the opening line mentions that it is an instructional text. What is unique about the Sbayt of Amenemhet is that he is speaking to his son and successor, King Senwosret not in person but from the grave. The former king is not an elder, such as in the text of Ptah-Hotep, he is already deceased. This is a very Afrikan notion of giving an ear to the ancestor for intergenerational guidance, sbayt. Amenemhet's message is directly to his son, the newly crowned Pharaoh, Senwosret. However, his message is meant to bring hope to the nation shepherd by the new king.

Sbayt of Ptah-Hotep

It is fitting in the Tawi/Kmt literary analysis to address the Sbayt of Ptah-Hotep. An ancient copy of the text is located in the National Library of Paris and is incorrectly known as the “Prisse Papyrus,” written in hieratic and obviously by a very skilled author. In 1856, the living paradox and curious, French Muslim, Emile Prisse d'Avennes came into possession of the document in the necropolis in Thebes (the ancient city of Waset). Worth noting, Mary Norton wrote the following about the elusive d'Avennes:

In 1843, Prisse settled down among the ruins of Karnak at ancient Thebes , and began to sketch and take papier-mache impressions from the thousands of inscriptions and bas-reliefs adorning some half-million square meters (140 acres) of temples, palaces and tombs…

In the course of his excavations, Prisse grew increasingly indignant at the demolition of precious monuments, by government order, to obtain stone for the building of factories. In 1941, George Glidden, the former United States consul at Cairo , had published an urgent appeal to antiquarians abroad to help halt the wanton destruction that was rapidly transforming the magnificent tombs and temples into shapeless ruins. “One solitary consolation,” he wrote, “may be derived from the overthrow of these Propyleia, which is… the opportunity afforded to Monsieur E. Prisse, a gentleman in every way qualified to take advantage of the sculptures that previously lay hidden… to record names and legends that, but for him, would have been lost to history and science.”

Glidden was referring to a particular temple in Thebes , but Prisse justifiably feared that a similar fate might await the Hall of Ancestors of Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC) in the Temple of Amon at Karnak ; it contained an incomparable historical and genealogical table of that ruler's principal predecessors, ranked in dynastic order. Despite the severe penalties attached to such an illegal action, Prisse resolved to remove and transport to France some 60 sculptured portraits from what came to be known in the West as the Chamber of the Kings.

Through superhuman exertions, with virtually no resources save a few men and fewer tools, and working mainly under cover of darkness, Prisse succeeded in extracting not only the bas-reliefs but several stelae, one with domestic scenes dating from 4000 BC. Also included were several papyri; one, discovered in the necropolis at Thebes and dating from 3300 BC, came to be known as the “Prisse Papyrus.” Later, Prisse made a facsimile of the original, said by Egyptologists to be the oldest manuscript or book in the world.

Ingenuity, audacity, subterfuge, bribery – all played a part in making way for the 27 large packing boxes which finally set sail downstream for Cairo . Prisse implored the French vice-consul to place the cargo under his diplomatic protection but the official instead admonished him – then added, “You have succeeded so well up to the present in an operation I would have considered impossible that you cannot fail at the port.” Following further vicissitudes, the crates were finally secured aboard ship at Alexandria and on May 15, 1844 , a full year after first setting to work, Prisse embarked to escort the priceless cargo to France (Saudi Aramco World, November/December, pp. 39-46, 1990).

The proper name of the document is Sbayt nt Imyr Taty Ptah-Hotep, meaning the Teachings of the Overseer of the City, Vizier Ptah-Hotep. In brief, I refer to it as the Sbayt of Ptah-Hotep or Teachings of Ptah-Hotep. The setting of the teachings is circa 2,400 BCE in the Fifth Dynasty of King Issi who was also known as King Djedkare, meaning Stability is the Soul of Ra. Most Egyptologists believe that the text named after Prisse, one of four actual copies, was copied in the Middle Kingdom, Dynasty Twelve, circa 2,000 BCE. That means that the text is possibly between 4,000 and 4,400 years old. Of the four copies, the “Prisse” version is the only complete version. The British Museum holds two papyri on the teachings of Ptah-Hotep, one from the Middle Kingdom and one from the New Kingdom . The fourth copy is a New Kingdom, wooden tablet in the Cairo Museum . It is the version found by Prisse d'Avennes which has received the greatest attention due to its completeness.

The first word in the text called the “Teachings of Ptah-Hotep” is sbayt , meaning teachings or instructions but more correctly intergenerational teachings or intergenerational instructions. Eurocentric Egyptologists have missed the intergenerational quality of this text and others like it. This is not surprising as they have been trained in their own European worldview. Scholars trained in the European worldview who are attempting to understand a production of the Afrikan worldview would often misinterpret the works of our ancestors and out right miss the mark, as we will examine later.

The concept of sbayt follows in other texts such as those of the assassinated Amenemhet I speaking from the grave to his son Senwosret; the Sbayt of Khety to his son Merikare during the turbulent First Intermediate Period; and other fragments of instructional texts such as that of Hardjedef and that of Kagemni. Central to all of the texts are the proverbial wisdom taught not only from experience, but passed down from the ages.

The Ptah-Hotep text opens with him explaining all of the hardships of growing old such as being tired and weak; lose of sight, hearing, and taste; aching bones; etc. Following is the answer to the purpose of old age and the direction that the text takes. Using the Miriam Lichtheim translation, as Ptah-Hotep said:

May this servant be ordered to make a staff of old age,

So as to tell him the words of those who hear,

The ways of the ancestors,

Who listened to the gods,

May such be done for you,

So that strife may be banned from the people,

And the Two Shores may serve you!

Said the majesty of this god:

Instruct him then in the sayings of the past,

May he become a model for the children of the great,

May obedience enter him,

And the devotion of him who speaks to him,

No one is born wise ( Ancient Egyptian Literature, The Old and Middle Kingdoms , 63).

To the credit of Miriam Lichtheim did an exceptional translation with the lines “ways of the ancestors” and “sayings of the past”. These translations place the teachings of Ptah-Hotep in their proper spiritual and historical context to the Afrikan worldview. Lichtheim works and translations are exceptional to the general field of Egyptology. However, she was an instructor and was herself trained in the European academic worldview. Let us consider the following online transliterations of Prisse:

wD.t(w) n bAk im ir.t mdw smsw (http://members.aol.com/mwhealton/pthgly.htm) and

wD.t(w) n bAk im ir.t mdw iAw (http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/literature/ptahhotep.html)

In her footnotes, Lichtheim states: “Staff of old age” is a metaphor for son or successor (76). In the terms mdw Smsw and mdw iAw , Mdw means staff. It is homophonous with speak, speech, or word. Smsw and iAw are translated as elder, eldest, aged, old, old age, etc (Faulkner). It seems that the mdw Smsw or the mdw iAw (Staff of Old Age) was more than a metaphor and could have very well been an office or at the least approached an office of learning and assistance.

Another very common oversight in the field of Egyptology is the translation of the word ntr into “god” or ntrt into “goddess”. At times, Ntr will refer to the great Creator, and at other times not. Clearly, in this segment of Ptah-Hotep's Sbayt, the term is in reference to what would best be called spirits. Ntr is often used in reference to the Pharaoh or someone who has done a great deed. Ntr can only be understood in the Afrikan context because if taken out it makes little sense. A comparison of the Ntr to the Orisha of Nigeria or the Abosom of Ghana would clearly yield the conclusion that Ntr is meant to express spirit, spirits, and/or divinity.

“The Tale of Sinuhe”or Shemsu Sanehat

Called by Egyptologist the “Tale of Sinuhe” or the “Story of Sinuhe,” this title is basically insufficient to the text. First and very simply, the name of the key character in the text is not “Sinuhe” as is translated by Egyptologists. The name of the key character is sA-nhAt or Sa-Nehat. “Sa” means son and “Nehat” means sycamore tree; and therefore his name renders the meaning son of the sycamore tree. The tree was very common in Kmt. In many of the paintings from the ancient land are depictions of the tree offering food and water to the people. Attested in the Ebers, Kahun, and the Edwin Smith medical papyri are the healing uses of the Nehat tree. To be named son of such a sacred and native tree was an honor. The meaning is totally lost with the incorrect spelling of the name.

It is much more preferable to use the term Shemsu in the title of the text because the word and its root appear several times in the very opening of the text. Shemsu/Shmsw is a follower, one who serves, or one who worships. The concept was applied to one that was faithful, and the text confirms that in the end Sanehat was indeed a Shemsu.

Sanehat was a servant of the Pharaoh and royal family. When the King was killed, Sanehat roamed throughout many distant and strange lands. The Biblical story of Moses in the Old Testament obviously was at least partially designed from this story. After growing old and having many experiences in foreign lands, Sanehat still missed the land of his birth, the land of his ancestors. He yearned to return home and eventually did. Everyone was in great disbelieve belief because the patriot had forgotten the culture of his homeland. The people of Kmt/Tawi were a neat and clean people, unlike the foreigners who Sanehat had lived among. He was cleaned, shaved, anointed with oils, given fine linen and reintroduced as a faithful Afrikan back to Tawi/Kmt. All of those years, Sanehat had remained loyal to the crown and to his land. He returned and gave many thanks. He was treated as a member of the royal family and eventually buried with the prestige of a king. This was not done for him because of riches or military skill. He was so honored because he was a Shemsu.

Mdw Nfr of Khun-Inpu

The text known as the “Eloquent Peasant” is one of many in need of renaming. Yet, there are many lessons yielded from the misnomer. Those scholars educated in the European worldview, irrespective of race, do not grasp the essence of Nile Valley thought. This is readily obvious in the text often called the “Eloquent Peasant”.

The so-called peasant in the story is known as Khun-Inpu, often wrongly called Khun-Anup or Khunanup or Anubis. There is no such thing as an Anup. Inpu, however, is one of the many spirits/ntrw of the underworld. Represented as a dog-headed man, Inpu is a judge of the dead, helping to see passage to the world of the ancestors and intimately involved in the judgment process. The so-called “eloquent peasant's” name means one who is protected by Inpu. His very name is far more significant than the idea of his being a “peasant”. In the story, Khun-Inpu is robbed. He pleads his case to higher authorities. During his ninth and last plea, he threatens to plead his case before Inpu in the spirit world. Khun-Inpu, therefore, is seen in the text as a spiritual man of faith and righteousness.

In addition to his name, Egyptologist often incorrectly make note of the use of “eloquence” or “rhetoric” or “persuasive” speech in regards to the text. The story is about a “skhti” or “skhty” (translated as peasant, fisherman, and/or farmer). The skhty told his wife that he was going to “Kmt” to trade so that he may take care of his family. In route, he is robbed by Nemti-Nakht, whose name is a reference to him honoring a spirit of travelers or wonders (Nemti) and his brute strength (Nakht). The skhty, Khun-Inpu makes appeals or petitions to higher authorities for Ma'at through Mdw Nfr (Good Speech). This was during a major period of turmoil in Kmt/Tawi. People had lost their way or had lost Ma'at, and here was a fisherman or farmer who had Mdw Nfr or Good Speech. He was not a scribe or priest, but a skhty. Egyptologists consistently miss the mark on this one Afrikan Spiritual concept of Mdw Nfr:

“My lord, I have found one among those peasants whose speech is truly beautiful ” (Lichtheim, 173).

“My lord, I have found one of the peasants, whose speech is truly perfect …” (R. B. Parkinson, 62).

“My lord / I have found someone among the peasants who is exceedingly eloquent of speech ” (William Kelly Simpsom, 30).

Like Ma'at, Mdw Nfr is one of those terms that simply do not translate well into European languages. That is part of the problem. Additional, trained in the European worldview, the best Egyptologists miss the Afrikan Spiritual concepts of the Nile Valley . My teacher, Dr. Jacob Carruthers (Baba Jedi Shemsu Jehewty) wrote the book Mdw Ntr Divine Speech: A Historiographical Reflection of African Deep Thought From The Time of the Pharaohs to the Present , (Karnak House, 1995). The lines in question are:

nb.i iw gm.n.i wa m nn n skhty nfr mdw n wn m3a

Dr. Carruthers translation is, “My Lord I have found one among those farmers whose speech is good, of true essence,” (144). In his work Mdw Ntr , Dr. Carruthers makes a thorough and insightful examination of the text which he entitles “Nine Petitions of the Farmer Whose Speech is Good”. He began his analysis by noting that Lichtheim, John Wilson, and Alan Gardiner all improperly translate Mdw Nfr into notions of eloquence.

While those Egyptologists recognize the importance of the arguments for justice and the commanding speeches of the protagonist, I feel that they misread the text and missed the profound message contained therein. In brief, their reading of nfr mdw as fine speech, eloquence and rhetoric combined with the assertion that it delighted or entertained the king or that the king enjoyed the pleas, caused them to depreciate the story itself and thus take the text lightly. In other words, I contend that they did not appreciate or take seriously the plot of the text which they dubbed “The Eloquent Peasant” ( Carruthers, 144).

The lessons of Khun-Inpu revolve around the spiritual concepts of speaking Ma'at through Mdw Nfr. The Afrikans of Kmt/Tawi believed that Ma'at brought peace and order. The setting of the Eloquent Peasant is in the First Intermediate Period of chaos and disorder. It is during the reign of King Nebkaure of the 10 th Dynasty, circa 4,000 years ago. The nation is in turmoil and had lost its way. When the Pharaoh had learned of this humble and modest skhti (“peasant”), he ordered that he be allowed to speak, that he be given a listening ear, and that his words are all written down. Surely, Nebkaure thought his words of Mdw Nfr would help bring Ma'at and restore the land. On the subject of restoration, there is a very unique text entitled the “Prophecies of Neferti”.

Mdw Nfr of Neferti

Similar to the other Nile Valley texts, the first problem with this text is the title itself –“Prophecies of Neferti”. The word “prophecies” might be a more appealing term to the general public, and sure prophecy has a central role in the text itself. However, the general school of Egyptologists has missed the central theme throughout classical Tawi literature. The intergenerational wisdom is less emphasized. The spiritual value of the Afrikan texts consistently escapes those trained in European academia. Let us examine the language of the text.

The wise man, Neferti, stood before the Pharaoh Snefru and said:

“I shall describe what is before me,

I do not foretell what does not come…” (Lichtheim, 141)

According to Parkinson, the key statement is translated as:

“I will say what is in front of me; I prophesy nothing that will not come…” (136)

Egyptologists basically follow the same line of thought. The Mdw Ntr word “sr” means to foretell or prophecy; “srwt” being prophecies ( Faulkner ). The determinative for the word looks to be a giraffe, an animal with a long neck who could look over the horizon and see things before they happened. Therefore, the translation is correct in this instance, but the lessons of the text is less about telling the future and more about restoring Ma'at through Mdw Nfr. This renders the title chosen by Egyptologist taught in European academia as insufficient.

The incorrect title surely stems from other incorrect translations in the text. When Neferti is summoned by the King, Egyptologists insist that the king was bored and wanted entertainment. “DAy Hr” or “DjAy Hr” is translated as “entertain”. Why would the King summon a wise man for entertaintainment who is neither a comedian nor tells any jokes? A much more accurate translation is enlighten instead of entertain for “DAy Hr”. This translation of the term also is in agreement with what happens in the text. Neferi says later “Speech enlightens (Hr) the heart (ib) like fire”.

Specifically, the King asked for someone who spoke Mdw Nfr (Good Speech) so that his words may be written down for future generations. Neferti began to speak of the future and the destruction of the Nile Valley – of doom and gloom, famine and war, utter chaos and evil. He foretold of Amenemhet I (Ameny), born of a Nubian woman who would save the land. The text foretells the coming of an Afrikan savior 2,000 years before Jesus. Egyptologists again show their bias here. Ta-Seti is Nubia , yet it is agreed consistency on the part of white academia to not use the proper translation. Why? Amenemhet is the founder of the 12 th Dynasty. The royal family from the 12 th Dynasty, like others, were of Nubian or Southern ancestry. Clearly this is obvious from the statues and paintings. Look upon the dreadlocks of the great statue of Amenemhet III, the statues of the Mentuhoteps, the skull of Seqenenra Tao II, the the Djehewty-Msu's mummies, the beautiful carved images of the great Queen Tiye, the Afrikan gold mask of Tut, the Afrikan representations in various paintings and sculptures; the Nile empire was built by Afrikans and 200 years of distortions and lies cannot erase that fact. What we learn from examination of the language and the culture is equally conclusive about the Afrikan identity of Kmt/Tawi.

The text states that Amenemhet I's purpose was to restore Ma'at and defeat evil. He would drive out the foreign invaders of the land and peace would take the place of war, prosperity would take the place turmoil. Consider the following translations of the same text:

“The Order will return to its seat, While Chaos is driven away” (Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , 143-144).

“Truth will return to its proper place, with Chaos driven outside” ( Parkinson , The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems , 139).

“Right will come to its place (again) and Wrong will be thrust outside…” (Lewis, Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Egypt , 73).

“Then Ma'at will return to her throne, And Chaos (Isfet) will be driven off” (Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt , 220)

This fundamental statement in the text, in transliteration according to the University College London based on the 1970 transliteration of Wolfgang Helck, is:

iw mAat r iyt r st.s isft dr.ti r rwty

Relying on Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian and Helck's transliteration from University College London -and above all with the Afrikan Worldview in mind- my translation is:

iw mAat r iyt r st.s isft dr.ti r rwty

Come Ma'at to return to Her throne. Isfet driven Away/Out

In other words, based on the more direct translation, I translate Neferi's words about Amenemhet's ascension as Savior to restore Ma'at as follows:

“ Ma'at will come and return to Her throne. Isfet will be driven away.”

Ma'at is a Kmt/Tawi word in Mdw Ntr that should most often not be translated as most Egyptologists attempt. The translation often result in lose of significance to the Afrikan Spiritual concept of Ma'at. Rather than attempting translation, those of us who attempt to understand Ma'at should learn what those Afrikans along the Nile meant when they taught about this concept. Isfet meant wrong, evil, sin, chaos, etc. My approach to translating Isfet is not as strict, but the idea of understanding the original context of terms is the same.

The Mdw Nfr of Neferti is a fundamental Afrikan classical text which prophesize the coming of a savior, born of a Nubian woman, who will restore Ma'at to her throne about 4,000 year ago, about 2,000 years before Jesus. He came to stamp out evil and to drive away chaos. By the time of the Pharaoh Amenemhet I, the kings had five royal names. Amenemhet was known as Whmy Msu, meaning rebirth. The restoration of Ma'at to the nation was a Whmy Msu or rebirth of Afrikan culture and spirituality.

Conclusion: Whmy Msu

Whether we are discussing the Whmy Msu of Neferti's text, the intergenerational Sbayt of Ptah-Hotep's text, the Mdw Nfr of the skhti Khun-Inpu, or the re-Afrikanization of the traveler and shemsu Sa-Nehat; we must re-examine and take a reappraisal of classical Afrikan texts and the mother-language of our ancestors. In conclusion, the above texts detailed were all part of the Afrikan literary canon of the Nile Valley . They are a small selection of the Afrikan classical texts. As Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers (Baba Jedi Shemsu Jehewty) taught for years, there are several central themes which often dominated Afrikan Nile Valley texts. Ma'at, Sbayt, Mdw Nfr, and Whmy Msu are critical parts of those key themes. These themes not only dominated the texts but were central to the Afrikan Worldview of the Nile . Egyptologists of white academia have often incorrectly translated these core concepts, misnamed texts, and missed the greater spiritual significance of the ancient works. Afrikan-Centered scholars have yet to dig deep into the ancient past to question and retranslate texts which have been translated decades and decades ago by European scholars. The need for Afrikan literary analysis and critique of the ancient texts has yet to happen. The place of Nile Valley literature and history in Afrikan-Centered education is basically absent. The influence that the classical Afrikan past may have on the Afrikan worldview is hopefully ahead of us – a Whmy Msu in our times.

Internet radio interview tonight July 9, 2010

2010-07-09T09:56:00.001-04:00

I will be on Brother King C-Los's internet radio program tonight at 12midnight Eastern Time and 11pm Central Time. We are talking about sell-outs, traitors, and opportunists who exploit our community.

You can listen live at http://www.rastaresolutions.com/
or
http://www.wgnu920am.com/
The call in number is 314-448-4325

LETTER TO YOUNG PEOPLE, TO ALL GANG MEMBERS, AND TO ALL DRUG DEALERS By Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2010-07-01T19:58:00.002-04:00

A LETTER TO YOUNG PEOPLE,
TO ALL GANG MEMBERS, AND TO ALL DRUG DEALERS
By Mukasa Afrika Ma’at
If you care about young people, if you know a young person who might have some challenges struggling through their teens years, if you are a parent having difficulty connecting with your child, if you are a teacher with students from the inner-city, if you are a young person angry at society, if you are a gang member, if you are an inmate, if you know someone who fits any of the above categories, if you want to prevent someone from becoming a statistic, this letter is for you.
I’ll begin this letter by letting you know that I have what you might call street credentials. I was born and raised in the most violent parts of the West and South Sides of Chicago. I come from a family of gangbangers, ex-cons, drug dealers, prostitutes, and drug addicts. I will not mention to what gang I was affiliated because some of you would not continue reading to get the message that follows. I represented on the South Side of Chicago. I got caught up in the glamour of the thug life when I was only a boy. I banged and sold poison in the community. I foolishly saw my brothers on the street as my enemies. I threw hands with the best, was feared, and was respected by many in the hood. I even held my own as I lived for some time in opposition territory. My little brother grew up in the joint. One of my uncles died in the joint. Another was beaten with bats in an alley and murdered because he stole drugs and money from dealers. My big brother drank up, smoked up, shot up, and snorted up. I saw my father when I was 11 years old for the first time. He was never in my life. He died from AIDS and used drugs his entire life. I would have shed tears if I knew him enough to love him, but I didn’t. My mother is mentally retarded, probably due to my grandmother’s alcoholism. Out of my mother’s seven children, only two of us were born fully normal because my mother drank 40 ounces like water while pregnant with me and my sisters and brothers. Her last child was still-born and I saw her turn up 40’s while pregnant with my own eyes. Once I snatched a 40 from her and threw it into traffic across the street. If I saw someone trying to get service from my mom or my aunt, I’d beat the living daylights out of them. Forget about a single parent home. I grew up in a home with no functional adults. I can’t tell you how many times I saw blood smeared on the walls of my home from family fights and family stabbings. I first went to jail when I was about 7 years old. Shattering a bus window, my best friend and I got chased down through the alley by detectives. He was later shot dead when we were about 15 years old. Almost nothing was normal about my upbringing. I’ve been shot at many times, been in gang fights and gang wars. By all accounts, I’m supposed to be a statistic.
Like many of you, I did enough dirt to get locked under the jail. I had priors for weapons and drug offenses. I only did a small bid in Cook County Jail because I pled guilty to burglary to an auto. I could have went down for physical assault and armed robbery. I wont give any more details. Unlike many of you, I dropped my flag in the County and was willing to go to the joint with no affiliation. As you know, affiliation means protection. I belonged to a gang that would kill you or violate you to near death until you wished you were dead for dropping your flag. Once in it, you were never supposed to leave. I was warned by old cats about how dangerous my decision was to my safety. I told them I had hurt too many people, been hurt myself, had too many family members hurt, too many friends hurt, saw too much hurt period to continue with that lifestyle. I was ready for whatever or whoever tried to come at me in jail or on the street. I was fed up and finished with the gang life. I got out on two years probation, which I completed. Looking back, my decision to drop my flag in County was dangerous, very dangerous, and I’m not saying drop your protection if you are in the joint or jail. One of my best friends was shanked in County and died, and another was shanked in the joint but lived. I am saying have a plan on your release. Have a plan never to go back. The joint is a revolving door, and straight up, most get caught in the door going round and round because they’re feeding addictions. Crack, dope, weed, you name it, a lot of old heads slanging because they’re feeding addictions. I know because as a teenager, I feed my own addictions.
Now, if that’s enough street credentials for you, let me get to my point. I was a warrior without a cause. You young brothers on the street are warriors without a cause. You talk and walk hard because you’ve developed street survival skills, but I know you hurt because I hurt. For those of you who are the most hardcore on the street and in the joint, you have to be willing to throw the hands up and throw down to fight with anybody at any time. Again, win or lose, you have to have a rep for respect and survival. That used to be me, but I know you feel pain because I felt pain. We all bleed, and we all hurt. We all have loved ones.
I’m supposed to be dead, in prison, an addict, homeless, or something else hopeless. Instead, I made a choice to change my life. I’m writing this to let you know you have a choice to change your life. Too many stray bullets have hit too many innocent victims, women, and children. Children are supposed to bury their parents, but too many families are burying their young, burying their babies. Too many people have smoked their lives away down crack pipes. Too many people have lost their lives before ever knowing their opportunities. Too many babies have had their lives taken away or deformed before they were born. Too many children grow up without both parents or no parents. I knew so many youngsters on the street that could have been absolute geniuses but dropped out of school, or got mowed down by bullets, or became prison numbers on some guards piece of paper. Too many young people could have been successful at whatever they wanted but have ended up in some street gutter nodding off dope or on some park bench hyped off crack. We gotta change this madness, this insanity.
When I got out of the gang, so many young brothers told me that they had much respect for my choice but that they could not do it themselves. They said that the gang was all they knew. They said that they couldn’t read and write to fill out an application but what they could do was cut, bag, and slang better than anyone. Running into these cats over the years, they’ve all had deeper regrets, more tragedies, and more pain for not stepping up to be men. They told me that the drug dealing, gangbanging lifestyle is the one thing that they could be proud of and that someone could look up to them about, but I told them and I tell you that it’s a dead end road waiting up ahead with some real sad times for you if you go that way. I left that life. I also know young brothers and sisters who left it. The hood has some stories that will never make the 10 o’clock news.
One of my good friends who I got into a lot of trouble with, he went down on drugs and weapons charges for a few years. He got out, manned up to his responsibilities, and he is a family man today. He’s a truck driver but makes a lot of time for his family.
I know an old cat who was addicted to dope for over 30 years of his life. One day, he told me, he got up from bed, looked around at all of the filth he lived in, and he decided on that day to change his life. He never went back to shooting up or smoking. He works in a college admissions office and makes sure students are on track with their lives.
I know a brother who went down for a ten year bid, got out of the joint, graduated college, got a job, and is a responsible man and father to this day. He works in education.
I know a sister who sold her body for drugs, used drugs since she was a teen. She lost her children to the system, got cleaned up, stayed clean, got her children back, and is a great mother right now. She works in the substance abuse field helping other women stay clean.
I can tell you about a lot of tragedies, of young people I know shot down, or people who smoked mickies and went on trips never to be the same, of people who went to the pen as teenagers never to see the light of day again. I can tell you tragic street events of my friends whose blood soaked the Earth. But I can also and would rather tell you about the lives of people who are in your shoes that made it. I can tell you about a girl I knew who was raped her whole life by her own father. She got the courage one day to send the pedophile to prison. She is now an educator touching the lives of other young women and young men. These are lives that are stories of hope. My life is a story of hope. Your life can be one of hope too - if you choose and all you have to do is choose.
I understand that when you come from a background like I do, the streets look real glamorous to a youngster. I grew up wearing $5 shoes with holes on the top and bottom. When I walked on a drug set, I saw teenagers with expensive clothes, jewelry, and rolling fresh cars and sounds. Unfortunately for many, that glamour might take a lifetime to get tangled out of, if they ever get out of it. Beneath the street glamour and glitter is a whole lot of hurt, a whole lot of tragedy. Some still choose that life even after they have grown up a little on the street and understand the consequences and dangers of the lifestyle. I will tell you that every last one of them who end up sitting in the corner of some dark prison realizes their mistakes. Every old head that’s been addicted, in their 50’s they realize that they wasted life. At the end of your days, you will either be at peace or tormented by your past decisions. You will either be remembered and loved or remembered by those who shake their heads in sadness at your name. If you’re a youngster, you got an entire life of opportunity ahead of you. If you’re one of those old cats, one of those street veterans, it’s still never too late to turn around.
I wouldn’t wish my background on anyone. Not many have fewer odds at success than what I had. However, I made it. I left the streets and gangs to go to college. No one in my family was educated. In the County, as a 17-year-old gang member, I began reading about Afrikan history. My substance abuse counselor became my mentor. He mailed me books on Afrikan history. I learned that my people built kingdoms and empires, among the first ever in the world. I learned about the great civilizations along the Nile Valley and throughout ancient Afrika. I had never known that Afrikan people had such a great history. When I learned about slavery, the Middle Passage, and segregation, I understood the origins of the Black ghetto. When I learned about the slave trade, I understood the origins of the drug trade. When I learned about the slave auction, I understood why Black families are torn to this day. When I learned about slave raids on villages kidnapping the young, I understood why Black youth are lost to this day. When I began to learn about my people’s history, I began to understand myself. As I learned about the attempted destruction of my people, I understood the self-hate and self-destructive behavior we exhibit today. The hooded Klansmen once rode horses through our communities, burned crosses, and terrorized our families. We’ve taken on the hatred of our oppressors and inflict destruction on ourselves. Instead of the Klan pulling us up trees or poles on ropes around our necks calling us “niggers,” we shot each other down in the streets and call ourselves “niggas” – the word isn’t in my vocabulary because it will never be a term of endearment, but I’m making the point. The net effect is still the same, hatred for Blacks and destruction of Black lives and Black babies. The more I would read, the more I wanted to learn.
As a misguided teenager, full of anger at society, looking for family in a street gang, full of hurt, I was a warrior without a cause. Youngsters who roam the streets today are warriors without causes. The youngsters who are in the revolving doors of prison are warriors without causes. A warrior without a cause quickly becomes a casualty of society. Prisons are profits for those who would surely bury us all in graves if they had a choice. You don’t have to be a statistic. You have a choice. You have a choice to be a warrior of righteousness, a warrior with a cause.
I have to also say a few words to young people who are not the most troubled, young people who are not the most at risk, but those who begin to mimic a lifestyle that does not fit their background because they are bored by being privileged, bored instead of thankful. I’ve also known what we called “wannabe gangsters” when I was growing up. These were kids who hung around us but they came from good homes, two parent homes, and were well taken care of. Count your blessings and stay out of trouble. A very good friend of mine, he was a “wannabe gangster,” at first at least, because his mother bought him the best clothes and the best shoes so that he could stay out of trouble and not sell drugs. A cop planted some rocks on him because he thought he was a drug dealer. He thought he was a dealer because he was always hanging around dealers. When the cop made the plant, my friend decided to rebel at society and his mother. Long story short, this kid from the good home, he went from being a “wannabe” to the real thing. He’d smoke more weed, sell more drugs, and get into more gun fights than anyone else. When I went to college, I spoke to him and was trying to get him to change his life. He respected me a lot, but it was too late. He was shot dead on his doorsteps. So, “wannabes” can end up being the real deal, with real and tragic consequences.
I went from being a dropout to a straight A student. I went from the gang’s roll to the honor roll. I went from jail to college. I went from drugs on the South Side of Chicago to Chicago State University. I went from being a master in street gangs to earning a Master’s degree. I went from being a misguided teen to educating other teens. I’ve touched the lives of thousands. I’ve inspired countless. I’ve given hope to people I don’t even know. I’m just one humble person. Imagine if many young brothers and sisters on the streets, in gangs, and in prisons decided that they can take their lives into their hands and make a difference in the world too. Imagine if they decided they do have a choice. We can change a generation. We can change not only our lives but also the future. I wish we could prevent murders before they happened. I wish so many of my friends were still alive. I wish more of us would do what we could to make a difference.

I am a faithful husband and a great father. I don’t drink or smoke anything. I don’t even eat meat, in part to exercise discipline. I live healthy and positive. I teach martial arts and self-defense to others so that we can hopefully have fewer innocent victims in this world. I’ve been a classroom teacher of students that have now gone on to college and are now in the work world doing great things. I am currently a Dean of Students in a grade school. I am an author and a community organizer. Our environments are not insurmountable roadblocks that will forever hinder us. We define who we are with our choices. Young brothers and sisters on the streets, in broken homes, locked up, on drugs, selling drugs, failing in school, all of y’all – you have a choice to be warriors of righteousness. With my background and what I’ve been through, if I can make it, if I can make a difference, so can you. Please spread the word.

BLACK STUDIES: A Note on Successes, Failures, Future Challenges

2010-06-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

BLACK STUDIES: A Note on Successes, Failures, Future Challenges
Monday, June 28, 2010
By Mukasa Afrika Ma’at
A more appropriate term would be Afrikana Studies. However, the field of study has yet to mature ideologically and for now in this article, I’ll be satisfied with the term Black Studies. It was through the research of Afrikan history, identity, and spirituality that I turned my life around as a troubled teen. My college career began at Kennedy-King College (KKC) in Chicago. I had not decided on a major yet, but I began taking some courses that I thought were Afrikan-Centered. I then went on and majored in Black Studies at Chicago State University, undergraduate, before I fully understood what the degree was about as a young man. The one thing I knew was that young people had fought, protested, took over college buildings, and were willing to risk death or imprisonments to open Black Studies programs and departments in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
I spent a great many of my undergraduate class hours debating with professors and students about Black Studies and so many other topics. After being basically dissatisfied with the lack of serious content taught in the discipline, with the exception of a few of my undergraduate professors, I went on to NEIU to study under Dr. Jacob Hudson Carruthers (Baba Jedi Shemsu Jehewty). In so many ways, my study under him represented new and needed ground in my research in Black Studies. At NEIU the term used was Inner City Studies Education, but it was Black Studies all the same. This is not to say that I didn’t have some other disappointments at NEIU – because I did.
Against all warnings, I went on to pursue some doctoral level studies at Temple Universities Department of Black Studies. Eventually, I learned that life teaches you great principled lessons from those who have little or no principled values. From KKC to Temple, one of the greatest failures I found in Black Studies is that so many professors had no particular loyalty to the integrity of the field. I don’t fault professors who come from other fields of study and end up in Black Studies programs and departments, however many who have continued to corrupt the discipline remain in those classes and in administration. Dr. Anderson Thompson of NEIU was very serious about teaching the historiography of Black Studies, that is the who’s who that developed the discipline over the last century and a half. Most Black Studies programs and departments across the country fail miserably to develop courses on the historiography of the major. As a doctoral program, Temple was sorely lacking in this area and many other areas for three reasons at least 1. Molefi Asante wanted to push the myth of being the “father” or “founder” of Afrocentricity 2. Many of the other professors didn’t know the historiography themselves and 3. Too many professors and students could have cared less about the historic development of the discipline or its current significance to Afrikan people. Outside of students who only wanted a degree, there were more students and professors beholden to the feminist movement and gay liberation than there were of those serious about Black Studies and Afrikan liberation. As I have learned, across the country Temple unfortunately is no isolated case but is in fact typical. Without too much of a second thought, I left the department to pursue my studies, distribute my works in self-publication and on-line, and continuously make my contributions to Black Studies and Afrikan-Centered education. I have continued to explore the depths of Afrikan culture in ways that my own professors didn’t know existed.
In the field of English, professors and students are serious about English. The same is the case in the disciplines of science, archeology, and medicine; you name it. As a dedicated student and teacher of Black Studies, I wish I could say the opposite were true about the field. What is missing in these colleges across the country? Principle, ideology, and activism.
Black Studies must be driven by the need to address the challenges in the Afrikan world community or it is not Black Studies. The cornerstones of the discipline must rest on Pan-Afrikanism, nationalism, and the Afrikan worldview. As Dr. Carruthers taught, the discipline must be guided by the fundamental texts of the Afrikan world. We must also restore the civilization of Kemet (ancient Egypt) to the Afrikan curriculum. Any discipline that is serious about the study of a people, their culture and history, must also intensify the study of that culture’s spiritual concepts before conversions to foreign religions. In regards to the study of Afrikan Spiritual faiths (before conversions), we fail in this matter in Black Studies because those who should teach the classes and promote the studies are themselves beholden and indoctrinated into foreign religions and biased against Afrikan culture and spirituality. Lastly, Black Studies programs and departments must connect and align with the Black community. Many of the colleges and universities with Black Studies programs are in or near Black communities, yet they may as well be separated by a gulf. They should be resource pools to surrounding schools, community organizations, social service programs, youth centers, performing arts organizations, etc., etc.
All things considered there have been some successes. Intensely through my graduate and undergraduate years, I studied the writings and lectures of Dr. John Henrik Clarke. He and Carruthers were like a remedy to the illnesses of the discipline of Black Studies. One of the successes of Black Studies was the production of works that have feed the global consciousness of Afrikan people and will continue to do so for a long time to come. The last 20 years saw the wide dissemination of the works through Black bookstores of not only Clarke and Carruthers, but also Cheikh Anta Diop, John G. Jackson, the editorials of Ivan Van Sertima, and so many others. This success was less due to professors and chairpersons in ebony or ivory towers, but it was more so due to students, community activists, high school and grade school teachers, and lay readers. The professors and chairpersons often found themselves playing catch-up. Yet, we did not fully benefit from that knowledge production as a people.
We must fight to institutionalize that knowledge and build it within the framework of the curriculum in not only colleges but also in the Kindergarten through 12th grade education. We see some of this success in public education where some schools or some teachers have infused Afrikan-Centered content in the learning process. I have taught in and promoted both Afrikan-Centered independent and Afrikan-Centered charter schools. Charter schools right now represent the greatest gains made in this area. Of course, our ultimate goal is that the independent school movement would take precedence in our community. However, as of right now, the cultural curriculum is most present throughout the nation’s Afrikan-Centered K-12 charter school network.
Some challenges of the Afrikan-Centered charter schools and independent schools are similar to the universities and colleges. All three are often missing administrators that sufficiently understand the values and benefits of Afrikan-Centered education for students of Afrikan descent. All three (independent schools, charter schools, and universities) have teachers who have found open career opportunities, which is good. On the other hand, these same teachers, in the schools and universities, have not taken Afrikan-Centered education/Black Studies seriously enough to advance and promote the field. Part of the challenge is due to the fact that in this present day, in this age of Obama, Blackness is considered an inconvenience at best. Until we take seriously who we are as a people, we should not expect anyone else to do so. Until we hold our Afrikan heads up, others will always look down on us.
We have taken some steps forward and some steps back with Black Studies and Afrikan-Centered education. Instead of attempting hopelessly to blend into the fantasy of the American melting pot, our challenge is to seek definition and identity as Afrikans in America. Our challenge is to seek definition as Afrikans globally. History will guide us in this search. Culture will ground us. It is useless to expect everyone to be on the same page. We can expect, among others, many of those of the political, religious, and educational “Black leadership establishment” to consciously continue to divert progress. They have done so historically and will do so today. The Black leadership establishment has functioned by working against the interests of our people. They gain points, pats on the back, and nods from the white leadership establishment by showing they will sacrifice our collective interest for their own personal interest. A true Black leadership will do the opposite; that is a dedicated Black leadership will give personal sacrifice for the collective. We are in no position for an entitled leadership establishment who is not willing to go out on the edge for our people. The crises in our community are in large part due to these established leaders. The crises in Black Studies is due in large to these same established leaders.
In conclusion, as I have continued to write and speak about, among our principled ideological positions that we must address and build on are Pan-Afrikanism, Nationalism, Afrikan Spirituality, and Afrikan-Centered education. Black Studies represents a vehicle to address these and other pressing issues of the Afrikan world. However, we must purify Black Studies. We must pick up the pieces of Black Studies/Afrikana Studies, dust them off and forge them through the fire and burn out the many impurities they have picked up through time. We must forge those pieces into a sharpened point with bladed edges and cut the future path as our next generation needs. This will be done only by those of us who are most serious about Afrikan culture, education, and survival.

John Henrik Clarke: His People's Historian

2010-06-24T08:35:00.000-04:00

John Henrik Clarke

His People's Historian

------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Henrik Clarke was born January 1, 1915 in Union Springs, Alabama and died July 16, 1998 in New York City. His mother, Willie Ella Mays Clark, was a washerwoman who did laundry for $3 a week. His father was a sharecropper. As a youngster Clark caddied for Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley "long before they became Generals or President," Clarke recalls in describing his upbringing in rural Alabama.

Clarke was inspired by his third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, who "convinced me that one day I would be a writer." But before he became a writer he became a voracious reader. Inspired by Richard Wright's Black Boy, Clarke went to New York via Chicago. He enlisted in the army and earned the rank of Master Sergeant. After mustering out, Clarke moved to Harlem and committed himself to a lifelong pursuit of factual knowledge about the history of his people and creative application of that knowledge.
Over the years, Clarke became both a major historian and a man of letters. Although he is probably better known as a historian, his literary accomplishments were also significant. He wrote over two hundred short stories. "The Boy Who Painted Christ Black" is his best known short story. Clarke edited numerous literary and historical anthologies including American Negro Short Stories (1966), an anthology which included nineteenth century writing from writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Waddell Chestnut, and continued up through the early sixties with writers such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and William Melvin Kelley. This is one of the classic collections of Black fiction.
Reflective of his commitment to his adopted home, Clarke also edited Harlem, A Community in Transition and Harlem, U.S.A. Never one to shy away from the difficult or the controversial, Clarke edited anthologies on Malcolm X and a major collection of essays decrying William Styron's "portrait" of Nat Turner as a conflicted individual who had a love/hate platonic and sexually-fantasized relationship with Whites. In both cases, Clarke's work was in defense of the dignity and pride of his beloved Black community rather than an attack on Whites. What is significant is that Clarke did the necessary and tedious organizing work to bring these volumes into existence and thereby offer an alternative outlook from the dominant mainstream views on Malcolm X and Nat Turner, both of whom were often characterized as militant hate mongers. Clarke understood the necessity for us to affirm our belief in and respect for radical leaders such as Malcolm X and Nat Turner. It is interesting to note that Clarke's work was never simply focused on investigating history as the past, he also was proactively involved with history in the making.
As a historian Clarke also edited a book on Marcus Garvey and edited Africa, Lost and Found (with Richard Moore and Keith Baird) and African People at the Crossroads, two seminal historical works widely used in History and African American Studies disciplines on college and university campuses. Through the United Nations he published monographs on Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois. As an activist-historian he produced the monograph Christopher Columbus and the African Holocaust. His most recently published book was Who Betrayed the African Revolution?
In the form of edited books, monographs, major essays and book introductions, John Henrik Clarke produced well over forty major historical and literary documents. Rarely, if ever, has one man delivered so much quality and inspiring literature. Moreover, John Henrik Clarke was also an inquisitive student who became a master teacher.
During his early years in Harlem, Clarke made the most of the rare opportunities to be mentored by many of the great 20th century Black historians and bibliophile. Clarke studied under and learned from men such as Arthur Schomburg, William Leo Hansberry, John G. Jackson, Paul Robeson, Willis Huggins and Charles Seiffert, all of whom, sometimes quietly behind the scenes and other times publicly in the national and international spotlight, were significant movers and shakers, theoreticians and shapers of Black intellectual and social life in the 20th century.
From the sixties on, John Henrik Clarke stepped up and delivered the full weight of his own intellectual brilliance and social commitment to the ongoing struggle for Black liberation and development. Clarke became a stalwart member and hard worker in (and sometimes co-founder of) organizations such as The Harlem Writers Guild, Presence Africaine, African Heritage Studies Association, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the National Council of Black Studies and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations.
Formally, Clarke lectured and held professorships at universities worldwide. His longer and most influential tenures were at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, and in African and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City. He received honorary degrees from numerous institutions and served as consultant and advisor to African and Caribbean heads of state. In 1997 he was the subject of a major documentary directed by the noted filmmaker Saint Claire Bourne and underwritten by the Hollywood star Westley Snipes.
John Henrik Clarke is in many ways exemplary of the American ethos of the self-made man. Indicative of this characteristic is the fact that Clarke changed his given name of John Henry Clark to reflect his aspirations. In an obituary he penned for himself shortly before his death, John Henrik Clarke noted "little black Alabama boys were not fully licensed to imagine themselves as conduits of social and political change. ...they called me 'bubba' and because I had the mind to do so, I decided to add the 'e' to the family name 'Clark' and change the spelling of 'Henry' to 'Henrik,' after the Scandinavian rebel playwright, Henrik Ibsen. I like his spunk and the social issues he addressed in 'A Doll's House.' ...My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit."
Body and soul, John Henrik Clarke was a true champion of Black people. He bequeathed us a magnificent legacy of accomplishment and inspiration borne out of the earnest commitment of one irrepressible young man to make a difference in the daily and historical lives of his people. Viva, John Henrik Clarke!

Click on title above for the John Henrik Clarke Virtual Museum

Portland Baseline Essays

2010-03-15T16:31:00.000-04:00

African-American Baseline Essays for Afrikan-Centered Education
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/depts-c/mc-me/essays-5.php#afam
This series was released in 1987. View the Preface to the African/African-American Baseline Essays.
The individual essay titles are as follows:
African-American Art Traditions and Developments by Michael D. Harris
African and African-American Traditions in Language Arts by Joyce Braden Harris
African and African-American Contributions to Mathematics by Beatrice Lumpkin
African and African-American Contributions to Science and Technology by Hunter Havelin Adams III
Social Science African-American Baseline Essay by John Henrik Clarke
African and African-American Contributions to World Music by Charshee Lawrence-McIntyre, Ph.D.

BABA ASHRA KWESI on AFRIKAN SPIRITUALITY: THE AFRIKAN ORIGINS OF THE BIBLE

2010-01-23T09:59:00.000-05:00

LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Presents
BABA ASHRA KWESI
AFRIKAN SPIRITUALITY:
THE AFRIKAN ORIGINS OF THE BIBLE

• Do You Really Know the Bible?
• Does the Kemetic Creation Story Predates the Genesis Story of the Bible
• Did Adam and Eve Story Originate from the Afrikan Goddess Concept
• Is there Ancient Kemetic Cosmology in the Bible
• What are the Afrikan Origins of Jewish Folklore
• What is True History of the Exodus Story
• Are there Afrikan Spiritual Laws in Judaism
• And much more…

Ashra Kwesi lectures on African history, civilization, religion, and culture. He presents lively and dynamic slide presentation productions and videos based on his extensive study and travel on the African continent for nearly three decades. His startling and revealing information on the African origins of many of the concepts and symbols now utilized by the western world is due to his focus on the ancient African Nile Valley. http://www.kemetnu.com/

February 20, 2010
Saturday
Program hours: 5pm to 7pm

The Songhai City Cultural Center
3117 Master Street
Philadelphia, PA 19121
(http://www.septa.org/ for directions)

Vending space is limited.
Contact: Mukasa Afrika
spirits360@yahoo.com or 215-520-7896
Visit Laying The Foundation Websites:
http://mukasa.info/
http://assata-shakur.blogspot.com/
http://afrikan-history.blogspot.com/
http://afrikan-resistance.blogspot.com/

Randall Robinson Discusses How America and White Supremacy Destroyed Haiti Before the Earthquake

2010-01-16T00:11:00.000-05:00

AMY GOODMAN: We have now with us on the line Ali Lutz, who is the Haiti program coordinator for the group Partners in Health that has clinics throughout Haiti.

Ali, talk about the situation of aid.

ALI LUTZ: Good morning, Amy. Thank you.

The situation in Haiti is obviously extremely dire. And we are trying to get supplies and medical personnel into Port-au-Prince and to the clinics that Partners in Health helps run throughout the country to support the response, because obviously our colleagues in Haiti, our doctors, nurses, surgeons, they’re dealing with their own families during this tragedy and doing the best that they can also to help the victims.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ali, in your contacts to get aid in, who, as far as you can tell right now, is in charge in Haiti? I know the US military now is in charge of the airport. But who do go to to try to get permission to bring your materials in?

AMY GOODMAN: Ali, are you there?

JUAN GONZALEZ: I think we’ve lost her there.

AMY GOODMAN: The problems with Skype here. Well, we’ll go back to Ali Lutz after this conversation.

But just before the program, I spoke with Randall Robinson. He’s the founder and past president of TransAfrica. He’s currently a visiting law professor at Pennsylvania State University, though he goes home to Saint Kitts tomorrow, where he lives. His most recent book is An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. I began by just asking for his thoughts about the crisis right now in Haiti.

RANDALL ROBINSON: It’s important, in trying to find ways to help, to be generous and to give, and to give generously. I would like to commend President Obama for his strong and fast response of a commitment of $100 million. Operations are already underway. I think the world is being incredibly generous, as I understand the pace of things to be at this point, the pace of giving. But, of course, as many lives as can possibly be salvaged need to be salvaged as quickly as possible, and I have every reason to believe that the administration and others are doing the very best that they can. As a private citizen, it’s my responsibility, and our general responsibility, to support every effort that’s being made to save lives in Haiti.

AMY GOODMAN: Word is now President Préval has said they’ve just burned—buried 7,000 bodies in a mass grave, but the most important thing right now is the search equipment, to go in and to save people who are just hanging on, perhaps who have been crushed, who are hidden in the rubble. And yet, that has yet to come. Some word is there’s a lot of aid at the airport not able to get through, and then other aid just hasn’t come.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, that’s not surprising. It’s hard for things to function when virtually all of the infrastructure has been destroyed. The Haitian government is unable to function, I would imagine, because it’s under the same burden that all Haitians are under. The President’s home has been destroyed. It’s hard to get from point A to point B, because the roads are blocked, petrol is not available. Heavy equipment is not yet available.

But in the spirit of konbit, the Haitian Creole word for “collaboration and cooperation,” Haitians are doing everything they can. They are resilient, industrious, courageous people. They’re doing everything they can to save the lives of their fellows, and they’re doing it, thus far, with very little, because it’s taking a while for that kind of assistance to materialize.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has tapped President Clinton and former President George W. Bush to coordinate the aid relief to Haiti. I was wondering your thoughts on that.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Amy, I’m, of course, troubled by that. I don’t think this is the time—neither the time nor the place to discuss those things that have troubled me for a long time in the history of American policy towards Haiti. Now the focus must be upon the rescue efforts that are underway to save lives.

But I hope that this experience, this disaster, causes American media to take a keener look at Haiti, at the Haitian people, at their wonderful creativity, at their art, at their culture, and what they’ve had to bear. It has been described to the American people as a problem of their own making. Well, that’s simply not the case. Haiti has been, of course, put upon by outside powers for its whole post-slavery history, from 1804 up until the present.

Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don’t make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal. But that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.

But in the last analysis, I hope that American media will not just continue to—the refrain of Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but will come to ask the question, why? What distinguishes Haiti from the rest of the Caribbean? Why are the other countries, like the country in which I live, Saint Kitts, middle-income and successful countries, and Haiti is mired in economic despair? What happened? And who’s had a hand in it? If Haiti has been under a series of serial dictatorship, who armed the dictators? There are other hands in Haiti’s problem. Of course Haiti is responsible for some of its own failures, but probably not principally responsible. We need to know that. We need to be told the whole story of these wonderful, resilient, courageous and industrious people. And we have not been told that. I would hope that this would be an opportunity for doing so.

AMY GOODMAN: In talking about President Bush, while most people may not know the role the US played in the ouster of President Aristide February 29th, 2004, probably what would come to mind when there’s any discussion of relief efforts is Katrina.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes. The problem of what happened in February 2004 continues. We had democracy in Haiti, and that democracy was blighted by the Bush administration. And now President Aristide’s party is prohibited from participating in the electoral process. His party is the largest party in Haiti. And why should we be so afraid to let his party participate? If Haitian people don’t want them, they won’t vote for them. That is the very essence of democracy, that people get a chance to stand for election, and the electorate gets a chance to make a decision. But we have obstructed that process in Haiti. We have done that under the Clinton administration, under the Bush administration, and that continues under the Obama administration. And that is indeed unfortunate. I am imploring American media to examine this in whole part, in ways that media have failed to do so up until now.

AMY GOODMAN: This history, the two crises, the natural catastrophe that is the earthquake, that the Red Cross is now saying they believe perhaps up to 50,000 people have died—and we’re not talking about, you know, just what has happened in the past, but what is currently happening. Who was just quoted? Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, the retired general who took charge of relief efforts in New Orleans, said that aid should have arrived, that said the US military should have arrived in earthquake-devastated Haiti twenty-four hours earlier. Of course, as we know, people trapped under rubble, every minute counts.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I’m not in a position to comment on that. I simply can’t make an assessment of how fast or how slowly they arrived or how soon they should have arrived. And so, I will withhold comment on that.

AMY GOODMAN: Does it make you nervous to hear about US soldiers on Haitian soil? If you can share a little more of the history of the United States and Haiti—or do you think this isn’t the time to talk, for example, about 1915 to 1934, the first US Marine occupation, and then—

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I should think it would—I should think, Amy, it would make Haitians nervous under these circumstances. Of course, I’m sure that they are, understandably, quite happy to see assistance from any quarter.

But it was in 1915 that Woodrow Wilson, of course, with a force of American Marines, invaded and occupied Haiti until 1934. They seized land, redistributed it to American corporations, took control of the country, ran the country, collected customs duties for that period of time, and ran the country as if it were an American possession.

But this has marked the relationship since Toussaint L’Ouverture and an army of ex-slaves overthrew French rule in 1804. The French exacted, of course, reparations from the new free black republic of Haiti, bankrupting the country. The Vatican didn’t recognize Haiti until the 1860s. The Western nations of the world, responding to a call for isolation and embargo from Thomas Jefferson, imposed sanctions on Haiti that lasted until the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, of course followed in the twentieth century by President Wilson’s occupation and then by the dictatorial blight of Duvaliers, Papa and son, and all of the other military generals that, of course, were armed by the United States.

And so, Haiti’s plight up until this point has been, in some significant way, attributable to bad and painful American, French and Western policy that some believe is caused or described, motivated by Toussaint L’Ouverture’s victory over Napoleon. The French have never forgiven the Haitian people for this.

AMY GOODMAN: Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said he’s ready to return to help rebuild his country in the wake of the devastating earthquake. Why can’t he just return?

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, the—I’m not sure what the stated American policy is, but of course the Bush administration policy was to forbid his return. But any obstruction of his return by any power would constitute a violation of international law, a violation of the UN Charter, a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a violation of any number of major UN human rights conventions. You cannot restrict people either from leaving their country—citizens, either from leaving their country or returning to their country. He has every right to return home, should he want to. And one would hope that no administration, the American administration nor any other, would stand in the way of his passage home.

AMY GOODMAN: A few nights ago, Naomi Klein was in New York, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and she quoted a Heritage Foundation press release that came out very soon after the earthquake, talking about this being an opportunity. That is the question, whether it is an opportunity, she said, of the corporate vultures hovering over Haiti, waiting to descend and restructure Haiti, or an opportunity for progressive Haitians to rebuild their own country, to rebuild Haiti. What are your thoughts about this?

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, it’s an opportunity, I think, for the American people to, at long last, learn the full truth about Haiti and about our relationship with Haiti. They’ve known—they’ve been caused to know very little about it. And I think progress—a new beginning starts with the truth. That is a truth that has been suppressed for all of these many years. The American people know almost nothing about what happened in 2004, about the abduction of President Aristide, about the destruction of Haiti’s democracy as a result of the efforts of both the United States and the French government. We need to know that.

And in the last analysis, Haitians have at their disposal a vigorous, creative, industrious and successful community in the United States, in France, in Canada. The Haitian diaspora is very much engaged with Haiti. They need to be given an opportunity to help Haiti rebuild itself.

We need to go away from what we’ve been doing in support, a sort of an unconditional support, for wealthy Haitians that are running sweatshops in the country, that pay people appallingly low wages. That is not the way to any bright future for Haiti. And that is the—of course, the idea that former President Clinton has been advancing for Haiti. I think it is sad. It can’t work. It won’t work. It will brew a further resentment of the United States.

And I think that the only way we can move ahead constructively with Haiti is to begin by telling the full story of our relationship with Haiti since 1804, what happened in the nineteenth century and what has happened in the twentieth century, so that Americans will understand at long last that Haiti’s misery is largely not of its own making. They will learn of a Haitian people who are quite different from those who have been described to them. And I think it is at that point we can make the beginning that we need to make and that is rooted in a policy that is constructive and sensitive and caring and productive for the United States, as well as for the Haitian people.

AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, founder and past president of TransAfrica. He fasted almost until death years ago under the Clinton administration to try to get President Clinton to close Guantanamo. In that case, it was to close Guantanamo so that Haitian refugees who were trying to escape the coup in Haiti were able to come into the United States. Randall Robinson’s latest book is called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.

STATEMENT BY WYCLEF JEAN ON HAITI EARTHQUAKE

2010-01-13T21:35:00.001-05:00

STATEMENT BY WYCLEF JEAN ON HAITI EARTHQUAKE
NEW YORK—The following is a statement by Wyclef Jean on today’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

“Haiti today faced a natural disaster of unprecedented proportion, an earthquake unlike anything the country has ever experienced.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake – and several very strong aftershocks – struck only 10 miles from Port-au-Prince.

I cannot stress enough what a human disaster this is, and idle hands will only make this tragedy worse. The over 2 million people in Port-au-Prince tonight face catastrophe alone. We must act now.

President Obama has already said that the U.S. stands ‘ready to assist’ the Haitian people. The U.S. Military is the only group trained and prepared to offer that assistance immediately. They must do so as soon as possible. The international community must also rise to the occasion and help the Haitian people in every way possible.”

Many people have already reached out to see what they can do right now. We are asking those interested to please do one of two things: Either you can use your cell phone to text “Yele” to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (it will be charged to your cell phone bill), or you can visit Yele.org and click on DONATE.

http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/
http://www.yele.org/

DEFINING AFRIKAN-CENTERED EDUCATION by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2009-08-06T04:25:00.001-04:00

Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
AFRIKAN-CENTERED SBAYT: Education for Liberation

Excerpt from Introduction

DEFINING AFRIKAN-CENTERED EDUCATION

I will begin with what should be my conclusions. 1. To be functional, all cultures and all people must properly educate their own children to maintain and build not only their physical structures in the world but their collective interests. People must educate their children to advance their well-being and survival. 2. Institutions free of the influence and control of other people are necessary to properly educate future leaders. Loyalty is not born in a people, it is bred and nurtured, and so too is disloyalty and treachery. 3. If the proper measures are not taken to ensure the survival and prosperity of a people, through the education of its future generation, that people will be the slaves and subordinates of a dominate society who will educate or miseducate them for that purpose.
It is politically correct to talk about cultural assimilation, the melting pot, cultural intermingling, multi-culturalism, etc., etc. The politicians, policy makes, opinion manufacturers and the like who make statements about how “We’re all the same,” then have their closed door meetings, invitation only, where they take their ties off, role up their sleeves, forget the public jargon, and start making strategies based on interest, their personal interest and the interest of their people and their families. The crisis with Afrikan people is that we take the public face of these opinion makers to be their real face when it is not. We then come up with similar ideas for our people, but when and if we have closed door sessions, our dialog has one face, the one we were trained to turn on in public. In fact, we think it is wrong to speak about our own interest, issues related only to us. Consequently, the same people who pull up their sleeves and address issues related to their group interest will call reverse racism when we do the same. Those of us who are naive then become very apologetic. Basically, this is the tragedy of Black leadership. We are playing in a game, and the necessary institutions and strategic moves of interest relevant to our people never take place.
We either run away from our own identity and/or then claim to be the same as everyone else. All people are not the same. People and cultures have different and sometimes conflicting interests. As an oppressed people, the sooner that we realize that the better. Some are saying that it is no different from us and those who run society. It is a very big difference. They control the input and output of affairs, and we don’t. They control the education of their children, for good or bad, and we don’t.
This underlies the significance of education for Afrikan people. Unless we control the education of our children from before birth to young adulthood, we will not produce and reproduce the type of society we want to bring into existence. Until we are clear on our identity as Afrikan people, we will remain confused and misled on everything we set our sight on. Until we understand the richness of who we are as a people, what resources we can bring to each other, and the need to protect and preserve our resources, culture, and interests; we will continue to be the subordinates of others and not independent unto ourselves.
Education has two purposes in this world, with very little gray area. The education of a people will either build and maintain their social and life structures or it will make them the slaves of others who have these structures. A people who are the cultural slaves of another do not only depend on the dominate group for jobs and housing, they see the dominate group as the purveyors of education, culture, and indeed the image of the Creator of all the worlds.
Afrikan-Centered education then becomes of great relevance for Afrikan people. Along the ancient waters of the Nile Valley, our ancestors had a spiritual-educational system in place to pass knowledge of the culture and worldview from one generation to the next. This ensured the survival of not only the culture, but the people themselves. This was a defense against the enemies of the Nile Valley. Although the civilization would fall, the Nile is one of the most enduring civilizations in world history, spanning a timeframe of over 3,000 years. The intergenerational transmission of the worldview through education was the key to the people’s survival. They called the interegenerational instruction SBAYT.

Afrikan-Centered Spiritual Pedagogy by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2009-08-06T04:11:00.002-04:00

Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
THE REDEMPTION OF AFRIKAN SPIRITUALITY:
An Afrikan-Centered Critique of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Chapter 20
Afrikan-Centered Spiritual Pedagogy

Long after invasions of and colonization in ancient Africa by outside nations, Africans maintained sophisticated systems of education… We can still see some of those systems today in traditional communities. It was these systems that were the priority targets of colonizers. Only when they were destroyed would Africans be weakened and confused to the point of serious vulnerability (Asa Hilliard, The Maroon Within Us, 118).

Introduction
Education takes place in and out of school, at home, in front of the television, listening to music, in conversations, and throughout the day. Essentially, pedagogy is education and the method of teaching that carries out a particular curriculum or set of teaching standards and values. It is through education that worldviews are made. Pedagogy is of great significance in the generational transmission of culture and a civilization’s longevity. Afrikan-Centered pedagogy addresses the educational needs and concerns of Afrikan people from our particular cultural orientation and worldview. The need for relevant pedagogy in the question of cultural retention and survival, indeed liberation, for oppressed people is essential. Because Afrikan people have been enslaved, colonized, segregated, and oppressed in so many ways in recent history, foresight is often lost of long-term planning that extends years and decades into the future.
Long-term futuristic planning for nation maintenance is the very purpose of education for any oppressed group. Otherwise, the only options become assimilation into the oppressive group or slow demise. Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed notes that oppression gives the oppressed a narrowed view of existence based on service to the dominant structure for the sake of survival, or what is thought of as survival. Therefore, any oppressed group or nation which seeks to educate their children for a future in which they control their destiny would naturally encounter some type of resistance from the dominate/oppressive structure. The oppressive system always has a pedagogy, or an educational plan, for the oppressed. The oppressed must have an education and pedagogy built for their liberation.
In Notes for an African World Revolution, John Henrik Clarke stated:

THE CRISIS IN AFRICAN EDUCATION is really a crisis in African self-confidence. Most of us who have thought seriously about this matter know that our former slave masters cannot afford to educate us. Powerful people never educate the victims of their power in how to take power away from them. This simple fact eludes most of us, especially those African-Americans who call themselves scholars and leaders (55).

It is a simple, yet profound statement, “Powerful people never educate the victims of their power in how to take power away from them.” This statement speaks to the urgency of any oppressed group to properly educate their children and students, if they ever wish to be liberated. First, however, it is necessary that the reality and impact of oppression is realized, or the oppressed will go and carve out his own back door - to paraphrase Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro:

Lead the Negro to believe this and thus control his thinking. If you can thereby determine what he will think [through education and socialization], you will not need to worry about what he will do. You will not have to tell him to go to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door he will have one cut for his special benefit (192).

The fears and thoughts that hold Afrikan people in oppression are fueled when they are not thoroughly erased and replaced with an affirming worldview. The imprint of “mis-education” can be subconscious, but the oppressed can be aware of it and still perpetuate the worldview of their oppressors due to coercion or choice for material gains. “In other words,” as Woodson explains, “a Negro teacher instructing Negro children is in many respects a white teacher thus engaged, for the program in each case is about the same” (23). An educational program for liberation and nation-building must be promoted by the Afrikan people of the world. Such a program must be implemented for the coming generations of Afrikan children. The most outstanding example of Afrikan-Centered education for grades K-12 is the national movement of the Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) founded in 1972. There are many Afrikan-Centered charter schools in the US, but the extent to how much they can engage the students in a thoroughly cultural-based education is questionable due to the lack of independent funding, which is the courageous step that CIBI schools take to promote Afrikan-Centered education. The need for an alternative to the public school education of Afrikan children is readily observed by many. In fact, the CIBI schools began because the parents simply refused to continue to allow their children to be mis-educated and pulled them from out of the public schools.
In the discourse on Afrikan-Centered education / pedagogy there is little if any discussion on Afrikan Spiritual pedagogy, or in other words the type of education based on the spiritual worldviews of ancient and traditional Afrikan societies. There are several reasons for the absence of this discussion. First, discussions about religion are always sensitive, and many people simply avoid them unless it is some recognizable common ground. Secondly, Afrikan Spirituality and culture receive no affirmation by foreign cultures and religions, and consequently there is no affirmation by Afrikan people who are followers of the foreign religions which negate their own ancestral cultures. The negation and self-negation of Afrikan culture and Spirituality go back to slavery and colonialism. The foreign religions that influence millions of Afrikan people throughout the world often belittle or even demonize Afrikan Spirituality. Such negative terms as “idolatry,” “fetish worship,” “paganism,” “heathenism,” and so many others are engrained into the images that people have about Afrikan Spirituality. If Afrikan history and culture are to be redeemed, we cannot avoid correcting the misperceptions about Afrikan Spirituality. If Afrikan-Centered pedagogy is to be Afrikan, it cannot be divided from the Afrikan Spiritual worldview, as there was no such division in the cultures of our ancestors.
The worldview of spirituality for millions of Afrikan people throughout the world was drastically altered from contact with European Christians and Arab Muslims, but also from contact with other Afrikans who followed the religions of those foreign groups. Yet, Afrikan Spirituality has survived the last three thousand years of invasion after invasion, and the foundation and essence of our ancestral belief system is still intact. However, for millions, the ancestral Spiritual worldview was distorted and altered. When the “religion” of any cultural group is distorted and altered, that groups fundamental understanding of the world, traditions, and life is transformed. This is especially so for the various Afrikan ethnic groups due to the complete permeation of Afrikan Spirituality in Afrikan cultures.
Through socialization, customs, rituals, and the rites of passage in Afrikan societies, children were taught the Spirituality of their people. In these methods, Afrikan Spiritual traditions were passed down for generations. With the spread of Islam into Afrika, beginning in the 7th century, many of the Afrikan traditional values would be lost due to conversions, but also because of long periods of war and slavery. Later, with the rise of the European Christian slave trade more devastation would be brought to the continuity of Afrikan Spiritual intergenerational transmission. The devastation of either religion to Afrikan culture and people can only be denied due to ignorance or dishonesty.
The trans-Atlantic Maafa spread Afrikan people throughout the Americas, and while many converted to Christianity as a coping mechanism in an attempt to lessen the horrific realities of slavery, others did not. In South and Central America, the Caribbean Islands, and the Southern United States, Afrikan Spirituality was retained in varying degrees. Due to the resistance to slavery, this retention of Afrikan Spiritual traditions was impressive in many areas in the Americas. The retention was impressive even with the intermixing of Catholicism in many cases. There was no comparable Afrikan retentions in the Arab world where Afrikans were imported into slavery. There are some basic reasons for the fewer survivals of Afrikan retentions in the Arab world, i.e. the systematic castrations of Afrikan men and the concubinage of Afrikan women by Arab Muslims.
Today, what is the role of non-Afrikan religious pedagogy and curriculum for Afrikan children? What is the role of religious education for children within their own cultures? Is there a need for Afrikan people in America and throughout the world to return to Afrikan Spiritual pedagogy? Is there a need for Afrikan people to return their children to the rites of passage traditions of their ancestors?

Rites of Passage and Education
Education was always a fundamental part of traditional Afrikan society. It was used in Afrikan traditional societies as it is used among all cultures and races throughout the world to prepare the children to one day be the custodians of their livelihood and the preservers of their civilizations. However, Afrikan cultures were not secular cultures. Spirituality permeates Afrikan traditional and ancient cultures. One of the most significant institutions in Afrikan cultures for educating the youth and preparing them to be the custodians of Afrikan livelihood is what is called the rites of passage. The rites of passage can be called the “Afrikan school” because it served all of the purposes that a “school” would serve in any other society. It was in the “Afrikan school” that children received instructions to prepare them to be functional in their communities. These schools also had a Spiritual basis to develop the character and help seek the ultimate meaning of existence.

In Ancient Afrika
No one would argue against the fact that children were being educated in Tawi. This would not be a supportable argument due to the Tawi writing system, the sciences, and the architectural achievements of the civilization. Additionally, the Nile Valley civilization of Tawi had a rites of passage for their children, similar to the many other traditional Afrikan cultures. Evidence is available. From the writings of Herodotus, the Greek historian, it is known that circumcision was common in Nile Valley civilizations (Davidson, African Civilization Revisted, 52-53). Male children in Tawi wore braids that were cut upon their rites of passage. One example of this braid can be seen in a carving of Ramses II (Diop, African Origin of Civilization, 203). Also, upon completing rites of passage, the children in Tawi wore “adult” clothes. The difference in children and adult clothes can be seen in the many carvings from temple walls and papyrus drawings. In Stolen Legacy, by George James, we get a good idea of the Kemetic/Tawi initiation system.
Carruthers finds it of great necessity to discuss Afrikan education in Intellectual Warfare. He states:

Most of us are ignorant about African education before the European invasion… A smaller group has examined the great African Koranic universities and extolled their virtues in comparison with the mediocrity of Western education. All of this, though, leads to a false impression of indigenous African education (257).

Carruthers notes that those who do examine Afrikan education do so with the outside bias of European methodology or Islam. He explains that Afrikan education in Kemet was both practical and scribal. Practical education consisted of occupational skills such as farming, brick masonry, and carpentry. Carruthers states, “It was through scribal education that the civilization produced its priest, civil administrators, physicians, scientists, astronomers, and architects” (257). The children in Kemet/Tawi learned the basic subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Their education prepared them to be functional contributors to society, and Afrikan Tawi Spirituality was deeply interwoven into the education. The children learned about the worldview of Ma’at, the spiritual values of Mdw Nfr (Good Speech), and the civilizations sacred concepts that governed their nation. Boys were taught how to be protecting fathers, and girls were taught how to be nurturing mothers.
Asa G. Hilliard wrote an essay in his book, The Maroon Within Us, on the educational worldview in the ancient Afrikan nation of Kemet/Tawi. The essay is entitled “Pedagogy in Ancient Kemet.” The city of Waset was a major center of educational and Spiritual studies which helped in shaping the worldview of the Nile Valley nation. Hilliard explains “It was at Waset (Thebes or Luxor) where the oldest records of a university headquarters existed. Speculation places the age of this headquarters as far back as 3,000 B.C.” (93).
Later, Asa Hilliard wrote an essay, “Waset, the Eye of Ra and the Abode of Maat,” for the Journal of African Civilization. Hilliard states that two of Waset’s great temples, the Southern Ipet and the Ipet Isut were major centers of Kemetic education and Spirituality. They were built almost entirely in the New Kingdom or the Third Golden Age (Egypt Revisited, 212). Of course, the foundations for Waset’s temples are much older than the New Kingdom which began around 1550 BCE. Afrikan Spiritual studies is the oldest form of “religious” education in the world. There is no church, mosque, synagogue, or other comparable religious monument older than the Temples in Waset or some of the other temples/universities in Kemet/Tawi. The reader should also know that the Temples (or Per Ankhs meaning Houses of Life) in Waset was one central location in a system of branches in the nation.
It is also important to note the influence of Kemetic Spirituality on Europe and Asia. Hilliard notes in reference to the Afrikan Spirituality of the Nile Valley:

It was this ‘African religion’ of Isis [Aset], Osiris [Ausar], Horus [Heru], and Amen (Amon or Amun) that remained one of the major religions of Europe until the national government of Rome installed Christianity as the state religion, after the Council of Nicea, nearly three hundred years after the death of Christ (94).

The ancient world admired the cultures of the Nile Valley, and often borrowed from them. The Romans, who became converts to Christianity, had a different religious orientation in mind for the world that they came to control. All nations and people, in various ways, promote the longevity of their cultures and the existence of their civilizations through the spreading of their worldviews and religions. Those nations and people who do not spread and maintain their cultural centers will become the cultural parasites of others. We have been parasites for too long, in contrast to our ancestors who were not parasites, but cultural fountains.
George James, in his classic book Stolen Legacy, decades earlier came to the same basic conclusions about Kemetic/Tawi education and Spirituality that Asa Hilliard reached in the essay “Pedagogy in Ancient Kemet.” Although Hilliard’s research is somewhat of an update of James’ Stolen Legacy, the conclusion is that education in the Nile Valley was fundamentally Spiritual. Like education throughout Afrika, sacred life was not divided from the secular. In fact, in the Afrikan worldview, secular life did/does not exist. If life is the gift of the Afrikan Creator, then life and all aspects of it are sacred, especially the education of children. Hilliard summarizes that “In the final analysis, the ancient Egyptian sought MAAT (truth, justice, and order)… to become one with MAAT, the cosmic order.” Ma’at was one of the many guiding Netchers or spirits. Maat was depicted as a female, and her counterpart was Djhewty, the Netcher of wisdom and intellect. Hilliard continues with the following encouragement:

A careful study and reconstruction of this aspect of our African past can guide the reconstruction and development of educational aims, methods, and content appropriate to the children of the sun (102).

In Traditional Afrika
The rites of passage in Tawi served the same function as it does in traditional Afrikan societies. In Afrikan societies the rites of passage was a strong Spiritual institution for the cultures. Concerning Ghanaian culture in relationship to other Afrikan cultures, Peter Sarpong stated “An element of religion is introduced into initiation ceremonies as in many other practices of the African” (Ghana in Retrospect, 74).
The Afrikan rites of passage in Ghana is similar to the Afrikan school in many other parts of Afrika. There are variations from ethnic group to ethnic group, but they all have several common features. Afrikan Spirituality is the common bases of all the rites of passages in Afrika. The initiate will gain a clear understanding of their duty to the ancestors and the Afrikan Creator. They will also have an intimate understanding of the spirit world, nature’s power, and life-giving forces. They all provide the child with proper training to enter adulthood as productive individuals. All of the Afrikan schools build social and communal relationships. The age-grades or groups who go through rites of passage together develop lifelong bonds with each other. Of great significance, the individual develops his or her relationship and responsibility with the society. Chancellor Williams in the Destruction of Black Civilization explains, “The age-grade or age-set (also called ‘class’) was the specific organizational structure through which the society functioned” (165). The age-grade or Afrikan school helped develop the child into the communal Afrikan worldview. If one does wrong or commits a crime, it is a wrong to society, the ancestors, and the spirits of the universe. Therefore, that individual’s family is accountable to some extent to correct the wrong with the individual.
For certain very important lessons, the men taught the boys and the women taught the girls. In particular lessons, a woman could not teach a boy; and in particular lessons, a man could not teach a girl. Women did not teach the boys how to hunt, and men did not teach the girls how to nurture and care for babies. These gender specific lessons led to successful families in traditional Afrika. What we should learn from this is that today we cannot leave the education of our children up to chance or the media.
In the classic book Facing Mt. Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of independent Kenya, explains Kikuyu culture, traditions, the function of education, and the rites of passage is discussed in great detail. Kenyatta notes that the Spiritual traditions and moral code of the culture is transmitted to the youth in this manner, with all of the customs, legends, songs, and history of the Kikuyu. The boys learn about hunting, taking care of the animals, farming, and warrior-hood among other things. The girls learn about plants and herbs, house keeping, and mothering among other things. The rites of passage is part of the bond of Afrikan cultures, as Kenyatta explains, and it is based largely on the relationship of people to each other and nature. This is the Afrikan Spiritual basis of the rites of passage in Afrika.
The idea that every individual worked for the benefit of the whole was more than a theory, it was daily practice. The concept of if one had food then all will eat was natural. The need for honesty, stability, and peace permeated the civilizations of Afrika. The Afrikan communal worldview led to the belief that the deceased never departed the living. The ancestors watched over society and were angered when stability was not maintained. This communal worldview, in Tawi and traditional Afrika, was instilled in the people as they graduated through the rites of passage. Afrikan people need not copy the social theories or religions of foreigners.
A utopia of Afrika is not being painted here, but the fact that Afrikan cultures were functional and stable before contact with foreign (and religious) invasions cannot be denied. In large part, it was the destruction or weakening of the Afrikan school that severely damaged the functionality of Afrikan cultures. Modernization and urbanization have played a role, but if people have their cultures intact from one generation to the next, they can transition to modernity without the lose of tradition. Where central aspects of the culture and spirituality are lost, recovery or rebirth (Whmy Msu) becomes fundamental.
It has already been noted that in the Afrikan school (or rites of passage) children learned a variety of skills that prepared them to be upright and functional adults dedicated to the well-being of their people. This educational process did not stop with the childhood rites of passage, it was an educational process that was lifelong. The Afrikan educational system helped one function from childhood to the revered old aged elders. The basis for the Afrikan school was the ancestral Spirituality of the Afrikan, and in this system elders were next to ancestors and given reverence. What I have conceptualized as the Miamba Tano of Afrikan Spirituality, which includes the ethical codes of righteousness of Afrikan people, were taught and strictly adhered to in the Afrikan school’s of our ancestors. It would, thus, become the duty of the Afrikan who successfully completes the Afrikan school to be an example of good manners, good conduct, and overall righteousness. Individuals who did not complete the Afrikan school were partially or completely, depending on the ethnic group, ostracized from their people. These individuals did not complete the process of becoming adults, and were viewed as children. People refrained from socializing with them, they could not marry, or live functional lives as those who had prepared themselves through the Afrikan school to participate in society. For these reasons, it was uncommon when someone did not graduate. Social pressure increased the functionality of cultures.

Conflicting Schools in Afrika
Due to the Afrikan Spiritual and educational systems, the societies were very productive, and each individual knew his or her role to the common whole. The European missionary schools and the Arabic Koranic schools had to separate the Afrikan child from their village to be successful in instilling a new pedagogy and worldview. It is important to examine the cultural erosion of missionary and Koranic schools on the Afrikan school. A thousand years before the European initiated Maafa, Islamic-Arabs crossed over into Afrika, and with their Afrikan agents, changed the Afrikan school and the course of history.
Islam spread across North Afrika in the seventh century, and over the course of the next few centuries the religion would gain a stronghold on the upper-third of the entire continent. This would give rise to the Arab slave trade in Afrika that drained many Afrikan cultures of its most precious resources - the people who were taken into this slave trade (or Maafa) destined to forced labor in different parts of the Arab world or death, and often both. The Arab slave trade especially targeted children because the child could be easier imprinted with Arab-Islamic culture than the adult. Just as the European Christian replaced and denied the Afrikans of their Spiritual names and culture, the Arab and Black-Arab Muslims did the same.
Also, with the Arab-Islamic invasion into Afrika, which was part militaristic and part proselytizing with traders, came the Koranic schools. In the Koranic schools, Afrikan children would have to write and recite verses from the Koran for several hours a day. They were also taught how to pray as Muslims, the glories of Mohammed (the founder of Islam), and the Arabic language. John Alembillah Azumah in The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa gives a lot of space to discussing the cultural realities of Islam in Afrika. The fact that Islam has a competing pedagogical paradigm from the traditional Afrikan’s worldview is not sensibly disputable. There are Afrikan people who belong to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam who are very honest worshippers of the Creator. The critique of this book, however, is focused on the power structure of the religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and not on individual members. The power structure of Islam, like Christianity, had a specific design for Afrikan people that had little to do with religious attainment and more to do with slavery and colonialism.
In Precolonial Black Africa, Cheikh Anta Diop makes a contrast of the Afrikan institution of the rites of passage and the Koranic school. He states that education in the Koranic schools began at age four or five, and the children would be separated from their parents, and often their villages, for months and even years. In these schools, the Afrikan child learned the entire Koran and Arabic grammar by age eleven, and later was taught Arabic-Islamic customs, law, and history (190). Diop explains:

Before Islam, children were marked by the period spent with other members of their generation at the time of circumcision… all the groups of circumcised form classes by age and are initiated into the secrets of the universe on the same day, at the completion of this ordeal. A bond of solidarity is thus established that lasts throughout life… (191)

In the late 19th century, Edward Wilmot Blyden, the great Pan-Afrikanist from the Caribbean, in his often cited book, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, made the argument that Islam was preferable over Christianity and “paganism” for the Afrikans. It is not surprising that Muslims of Afrikan descent often make note of the book. However, two decades later, Blyden seemed to have retracted on some of his fundamental conclusions. He wrote in African Life and Customs that Afrikans had their own institutions and “religion” for socialization of people and children. African Life and Customs is not as frequently cited as Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race.
Christianity had two major waves in Afrika. The first was in remote times before and during the period of the Roman Catholic church which gave rise to the Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The early Afrikan Church borrowed heavily from Nile Valley Spirituality before the Romans became Christians under Constantine. The Romans were killing and persecuting the early Afrikan Christians, then the Romans became Christians and took over the church. In African Glory, deGraft-Johnson discusses this history. The second wave of Christianity into Afrika came as a result of slavery, beginning with the Portuguese, and later moving into the nineteenth century and twentieth century periods of colonization.
Reading African Glory: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations by JC deGraft-Johnson would be helpful in understanding the political and military spread of Christianity and Islam in Afrika. It is important to note that the success of Christianity in Afrika was due to sheer force on the one hand and proselytizing on the other, like Islam. Catholicism’s success in North Afrika was due to the ancient Roman colonization of North Afrika. North Afrikans adopted Christianity before the religion was official in Rome. However, when Rome adopted the religion, the Afrikan Tawi temples and artifacts that displayed the Afrikan’s Spirituality were destroyed. Of course, the Nile Valley had suffered many other invasions by the time the Romans arrived in 30 BCE. When the Romans officially adopted Christianity, after the Nicene Council in 325 ACE, they would intensify their campaigns against Nile Valley Spirituality. The Romans closed Afrikan temples, and destroyed Afrikan artifacts. It was to their benefit to try and erase any resemblances to their new religion on the ancient Afrikan monuments.
Eventually North Afrika was in the hands of the Romans, and would later fall into the hands of the Arabs. The Romans and Arabs became engaged in wars over the control of North Afrika, beginning with Egypt when Islamic armies stormed into Afrika in 639 ACE. Muslims fought harder for North Afrika than they did for Egypt. The Egyptians, deGraft-Johnson explains, were disenchanted with Roman Catholic taxation and oppression. As a result, they did not resist the new colonizers. However, when the Arabs gained control, the taxation and oppression continued just the same (African Glory, 72-74). What differed completely with the new religion in Egypt, and the rest of North Afrika, was the religious worldview and pedagogy of the new colonizers. Islam, Mohammed, and the Koran replaced Jesus, Mary, and the Bible. Obviously, neither considered that the Afrikan had a worthwhile Spiritual worldview of their own. The Afrikan worldview was, in fact, more ancient and more developed than either of the two new comers to Afrika.
The second wave of Christianity into Afrika began with the slave trade and peaked under colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The European-Christians, like the Arab-Muslims, set up schools to spread their religion and their culture, and to check or alleviate the culture and Spirituality of the Afrikan people by focusing on the reorientation of the Afrikan children in these schools. Concerning Christian missionary education in Afrika, Jomo Kenyatta states:

In the early days of European colonization many white men, especially missionaries, landed in Africa with preconceived ideas of what they would find there and how they would deal with the situation… The European based their assumption on the conviction that everything that the African did or thought was evil. The missionaries endeavored to rescue the depraved souls of the Africans from the ‘eternal fire’; they set out to uproot the African, body and soul, from his old customs and beliefs, put him in a class by himself, with all his tribal traditions shattered and his institutions trampled upon. The African, after having been detached from his family and tribe, was expected to follow the white man’s religion without questioning whether it was suited for his condition of life or not (Facing Mt. Kenya, 259-260).

Just as the Koranic schools assisted the Islamic control and colonization in many North Afrikan countries, missionary schools assisted European colonization. In fact, as Jomo Kenyatta explains, the European missionaries themselves played a central role in the colonization of Afrika. The missionaries were often information gatherers for the colonizers. In country after country, the missionaries would precede the colonial occupation. Chinua Achebe provides a vivid description of how missionaries played a central role in the colonization of Afrika and the destruction of Afrikan Spirituality and institutions in the very popular novel Things Fall Apart. The story is set in the land of the Igbo (or Ibo) people of modern Nigeria. Achebe gives a lively account of Igbo customs, festivals, and traditions. Then he displays the disastrous impact of missionaries and colonization on traditional Afrikan culture. Achebe also highlights the resistance of Afrikans to foreign intrusions.
The spread of the new religions of Islam and Christianity into Afrika presented many challenges to the Afrikan traditions. Among some groups, Afrikan Spirituality was forcibly replaced, others created a dual relationship that was at the core Afrikan, while still others completely resisted. Often, the generational continuity of Afrikan pedagogy suffered or was lost.
The Dogon people of Mali resisted Islam and Arabic culture. The Dogon fled to the safety of mountainous areas in their country while much around them was absorbed by Arab-Islamic culture. As a result of steadfastly holding onto their traditions and passing their Spirituality and worldview to succeeding generations, a wealth of knowledge about Dogon Spirituality was preserved. The Dogon have astounded the world about the Sirius star system, the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter. The reader is referred to The Pale Fox by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. Diop explains that the Dogon use a lunar, solar, and sidereal calendar similar to what was used in the Nile Valley. Diop explores the many commonalities of Dogon and Nile astronomy and Spirituality, and from his research concludes that the Dogon inherited their science of the stars and “heaven” from Nile/Tawi. This section of his major work, Civilization or Barbarism, is a good exercise in Afrikan Spirituality (313-322). Diop states, “The myth of the Dogon’s pale fox yurugu strangely recalls the myth of the Egyptian god Seth, who has the same animal form, and who, like him, introduced the creation of disorder, evil, and sterility” (320).
The comparison supports Diop’s life-long research that Afrikans inherited Nile civilization through long, generational, migratory patterns. If the Afrikan school of the Dogon was replaced with the Koranic school of Islam, or the missionary school of Christianity, they would have surely lost this complex, ancient, Afrikan Spiritual wisdom. One wonders how much ancient wisdom has already been lost in Afrika due to foreign worldviews?

Pedagogy and Slavery
Devastation to the Afrikan Spiritual worldview and pedagogy came with the processes of enslavement in the Americas and in the Arab controlled world. Afrikan children were taught a completely different worldview, one used by their captors to suit them for their new reality as slaves, servants, and subordinates. This function of non-Afrikan religious pedagogy for Afrikan children was the foundation of colonial missionary schools and Koranic schools. Religious principles aside, religious education is no different from secular education which socializes the future generations to serve certain roles to society. Afrikans were brought to America for the purpose of forced labor and profits. Consequently, the religious indoctrination of Afrikans had a very economical purpose for the European enslavers. It was a method to advance their structure of the world. For the Afrikans who converted to Christianity, it was ultimately a coping mechanism to lessen the inhumanity and brutality of slavery. Blassingame states, “The shock of seeing their parents flogged was an early reminder to many black children of what slavery was” (186). Again, the similarities with Christian and Islamic oppression are parallel in many ways.
Slavery was a structure created by the plantation South in which Afrikan people had a specific place, after slavery it was a lot of discussion on what to do with the freed Afrikans. This discussion was very often called “The Negro Question” or what to do with the Negro. William Watkins states, “The Civil War and surrounding activity brought the ‘Negro question’ to the center of social and political debate. The question of what to do with the newly freed slave evoked a multitude of responses” (The White Architects of Black Education, 31).
Watkins further explains that the desire to answer the “Negro Question” culminated in a series of Southern conferences. The first two conferences set the stage for the later ones. The first two were held at Lake Mohonk in the Catskill Mountains in 1890 and 1891. The basic resolutions from the conferences were that Afrikans (“Negroes” as they said) had to be properly educated to fit the future of the South (144-148).
Concerning the Mohonk conferences, Jacob Carruthers stated:

This is the place where the leading white educators and ministers met to hammer out a consensus on Negro education. No blacks were in attendance - none were invited, but the conference thought they had successful meetings and more importantly they - those white men - plotted the course of black education that still exist today! That pattern was later transferred to Africa by the British (Intellectual Warfare, 256).

White educators and ministers plotted the course of “Negro” education, and their plot was not absent of a religious value system in the European worldview. They decided that Afrikan people must be educated as workers to promote the interest of a white power structure and future. Furthermore, Christianity would have a simple, yet central, role in the “education” and “civilization” of Afrikan people in America. The same analysis is applied to the role of Islam and the Koranic schools in Afrika today. The historic role of Islam in Afrika to the Arab is the promotion of an Arabic worldview at the expense of the traditional Afrikan worldview. This is the central question: Will Afrikan people continue to receive a religious and/or secular education of subordination by foreign people and foreign cultures, or will we develop our own education of liberation? Until all Afrikan children receive an education and worldview of liberation on how to build and maintain nations, we will remain unprepared for the future, and dominated by others. Only an education developed by Afrikan people will advance an Afrikan structure of the world, and we must never forget that the Afrikan school was never divorced of Afrikan Spirituality.

Conclusion
It has been noted that a spiritual/religious pedagogy for children serves the function of inter-generational transmission of a cultural worldview and scared ethics. This is the role of religions and spiritual systems among all people throughout the world. This is also the shortcoming of non-Afrikan belief systems for Afrikan people. All religions originate out of and reflect their cultural settings. When Afrikan children are being taught a non-Afrikan belief structure (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) they are also being taught a non-Afrikan culture and worldview. This will eventually lead Afrikan people on non-Afrikan physical and psychological journeys. Thus, Afrikans are not receiving an education based on the preservation of an Afrikan worldview. Again, religious principles aside, all religions/spiritual systems serve a purpose in the promotion of their cultures and civilizations in the world. If a group of people loses their spiritual and cultural ground, that may indeed be the end of that people’s worldview and civilization, as history has proven time and time again.
Afrikan Spiritual pedagogical methods were challenged or threatened by foreign religions in Afrika through Arab-Islamic and European-Christian education, socialization, colonization, and enslavement. The Afrikan Spiritual worldview was never completely eliminated. However, with the adoptions of non-Afrikan belief systems, Afrikan Spirituality has surely suffered. We can be certain in saying that Afrikan Spirituality has stood the test of time, armies, and centuries of persecution - and is not going anywhere. However, the need to recover ancient integrity is urgent.
Many Afrikans in Afrika resisted the foreign traditions. In the Americas, Afrikans being taken captive into slavery, in varying degrees, remarkably held onto their traditions in several countries throughout the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and the Southern United States. Afrikan maroons, runaways who set up rebel camps that raided and threatened the institution of slavery, held onto Afrikan Spirituality. Due to the frequency and longevity of many of the maroon communities, and the presence of children, it cannot be doubted that there were sincere efforts to pass on the Spiritual traditions to succeeding generations. Also, there are millions of Afrikan people in the Americas who inherited the Spiritual traditions down through time since slavery. There are also many who have converted to Afrikan Spirituality in the Americas. Still, there are millions of Afrikans throughout the world who have little knowledge about their ancestral Spirituality, and often think it is “evil” or “pagan,” and it is they who must also be redeemed or reborn.
A return to the Afrikan concept of education will be one of Afrika’s Spiritual traditions that will benefit Afrikan people throughout the world. Many Afrikan American organizations in the United States have started rites of passages for children and adults. Reliance on the public educational school system will not be enough to make Afrikan children functional to their communities, as we have repeatedly seen among our children. The conflict of the various rites of passage programs now in place, many of which are in churches, is to incorporate the Afrikan Spiritual worldview among Afrikan Americans who faithfully follow non-Afrikan religions. The conflict may not be readily obvious. The Afrikan Spiritual frame of reference was completely interwoven in the Afrikan school and the rites of passage, and it is only in an Americanized context that the separation would take place.
Properly guided Afrikan-Centered education and general pedagogy is healing for Afrikan children. Today, we absolutely need a rites of passage to teach our young males and females about the dynamics of adulthood, manhood and womanhood in a family and community centered context. We cannot leave this fundamental process up to chance or the public schools. Our ancestors taught children about adulthood as they became adults. This void is a central part of the crisis in the Afrikan community. It cannot be filled with foreign traditions unless we plan to lose or compromise our own identity and traditions.
If Afrikan American children were raised into an Afrikan Spiritual worldview, they would receive a protective shield against many of the problems that plague the community (self-hate, violence, drugs, gangs, etc). This is a very reasonable conclusion because the Afrikan school has worked for our ancestors for thousands of years before foreigners introduced new educational systems to Afrikans - systems which invariably do not work. The standard curriculum in the public school system does not reflect the history and culture of Afrikan people, and this is also the case with the missionary schools and the Koranic schools in Afrika.
What is the role of religion for non-Afrikan people throughout the world? If religious pedagogy is essential to the cultural bond of all cultural and ethnic groups, it is also essential to the cultural bonds of Afrikan people. Millions of Afrikan people hunger for an Afrikan Spiritual movement as Afrikan-Centered consciousness develops. Such a movement is inevitable, and it will be both national and global. To be successful, it will have to be a movement at the grassroots level, and this is already occurring. That such a movement in culturally relevant Afrikan Spiritual pedagogy is necessary is not doubted by many who have made efforts. The Spiritual worldview of Afrikan people is essential for group survival. Thus, the Afrikan Spiritual movement must and will happen.

AFRIKAN KEMETIC MATHEMATICS by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2009-08-06T03:58:00.002-04:00

Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
AFRIKAN-CENTERED SBAYT: Education for Liberation
Chapter 11
AFRIKAN KEMETIC MATHEMATICS

“Egypt was the cradle of mathematics.” Aristotle.

Introduction
The Nile River Valley’s ancient past is a product of Afrikan development and migrations into that area. The Nile has been fed for thousands of years from inner Afrika, the Great Lakes region of Central-East (especially DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania) and the Highlands of Ethiopia. The first Humans in the world came from this part of Afrika. The Afrikan people who populated the greater Nile Valley came from these regions and West from the Sahara. They brought civilization with them into the Nile, and they also brought the mathematics that they later developed even further after the founding of dynastic Tawi (Ancient Egypt or the Two-Lands). The Nile Valley would be the parent cultural cradle of Afrika. I refer the reader to Diop’s essay “Peopling of Africa from the Nile Valley” in The African Origin of Civilization. In and around this region was the parent location of Afrikans, humanity, civilization, and mathematics. My first introduction to Afrikan mathematics came by way of the great Cheikh Anta Diop in Civilization or Barbarism. Further, I was profoundly impressed with the subject of Afrikan mathematics from the works of Beatrice Lumpkin and convinced that math, like all the subjects of learning, had been told through a false European view of the world that was not accurate and intentionally falsified to bolster European supremacy.
It is through this European supremacist view of education that children are incorrectly taught math and all of the subject areas. This, I maintain, is one of the key reasons why children of Afrikan descent perform poorly in school. Children are taught about great Europeans who created math, the “Father of Geometry” as Euclid is known, or the “Father of Algebra” as Diophantus is known, or the “Father of Numerology” as Pythagoras is known. The fact is that geometry, algebra, and numerology all existed before the Greeks had the most vague understanding of mathematics. As much and more will be explained in the following pages. Children, and adults in universities, are taught or indirectly left with the impression that Greeks fathered, not only math, but science, philosophy, and all areas of knowledge. The Greeks were latecomers in the history of mathematics; indeed the Greeks were latecomers in the history of world civilization that sprang up in the Nile Valley and later in the Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, and China before entering Europe. From the current educational system, we are left to believe that civilization started with the Greeks and spread to Afrika very late with the era of slavery. This is altogether false. As all cultures and peoples have, the Greeks did make some contributions to mathematics, but the Greek contributions to mathematics was built from an Afrikan foundation before and during the Library of Alexandria period in Egypt where many of the great “Greek” mathematicians went and studied. It is significant to note that the ancient scholars associated with the Library of Alexandria are all assumed to be Greek merely, it seems, because they made a contribution to some filed of knowledge and wrote in Greek. The fact is that the identity of many of the philosophers is not clear in the least. Instead of doing guesswork about racial identity, I want to focus on Afrikan mathematics. In fact, before the building of this library, Greeks were already studying Afrikan math and other subjects in this Afrikan nation.
The Greeks never claimed to be “Fathers” of math, science, history, or philosophy. Those fatherhood titles were given in later times. However, the Greeks didn’t always give credit to the Afrikans of the Nile who taught them mathematical and knowledge otherwise. Consider the following quote from Basil Davidson in Egypt Revisited:

The philosophers and mathematicians were in full agreement. Pythagoras spent no fewer than twenty-one years in Egypt. Aristotle said that “Egypt was the cradle of mathematics.” Eudoxus, Aristotle’s teacher and a foremost mathematician of his time, had likewise studied in Egypt before teaching in Greece. Isokrates and Plato were profoundly influenced by Egyptian philosophy. Euclid, again, learned mathematics in Egypt before applying them elsewhere. And who could be surprised? For the pyramids and temples of the Nile were not built by guesswork or rule of thumb. They were built by the use of mathematical propositions which the Egyptians had discovered and proven. How otherwise could it have come about that the difference in length between the shortest base-side of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh (c2600BC) and the longest side (756.08 [feet]) is no more than a staggeringly 7.9 inches? Herodotus and the men of his time did not know this, but they did know that the Great Pyramid was only one of innumerable mathematical marvels to be found in the land of the Pharaohs (44).

Mathematics is not an invention as much as it is a realization of what already existed, the realization of phenomena, the manipulation of numbers to arrive at solutions to known and unknown figures, and the calculations of shapes. All cultures have made contributions to the progress of mathematics. Lumpkin states: “Any unprejudiced view of world history must acknowledge that many different people and races on every continent have made great mathematical discoveries” (Blacks in Science, “Africa in the Mainstream of Mathematics History,” 101). Still, as Lumpkin would agree from her research, Afrika led the world in mathematics for thousands and thousands of years, and the foundations for much of what is taught in math is from the Nile Valley.
This brief essay will focus on the Afrikan KMT/Tawi foundations of mathematics, as it was from the Nile Valley that mathematics shed its light on the Old World by way of the KMT mathematicians and later the Library of Alexandria, a library based on a massive collection of Afrikan writings. Yet, this essay’s focus will be on the development of mathematics prior to the Library of Alexandria, that is the foundation knowledge of the library. The focus of this essay will be on Tawi, beginning from the very conservative estimate of the first dynasty of at least -3200. For dating purposes, BC and AD (Before Christ and anno Domini) will not be used. Nor will use be made of BCE and ACE (Before the Common Era and After the Common Era). Instead - or + years will be used. For example, instead of 3200 BC, or 3200 BCE, it will be found as -3200. Instead of 1000 AD, or 1000 ACE, it will be found as +1000.
The focus of the essay will deal primarily with the mathematics of the pre-Dynastic and Old Kingdom period (what is also known as the First Golden Age from the First through the Sixth Dynasties). The mathematical concepts later used in Kemet had their origins in this early period. Witness of this is the architectural and mathematical achievements of the early period, which were in ways never surpassed by later Dynasties, in ways never surpassed by any nations up to this day. The Great Pyramids of Giza are still marveled at in their ruin like no other pyramids in the world. They were a much more wonderful sight when they were encased in polished and shining limestone, tipped with the ben-ben stones, with a complex of fine buildings and smaller pyramids around them thousands of years ago. Millions and millions of extremely massive bricks went into the construction of these monuments. It is supported by evidence that mathematics were essential in the building process from the precision of the architecture, astronomical and Earthly alignments, tools and records found in Kemet, inner and underground chambers.

Early Afrikan Nile Valley Civilization
There is some agreement on the definition of civilization. Most scholars seem to believe that civilizations originated in settled communities that developed complex trades or occupations among the residents. These settled communities were able to develop high arts, sciences, and writing. Many scholars place the beginning of civilization at the advent of writing. By either of these definitions, the Afrikan Nile Valley is the seat of civilization.
However, we have been operating from a limited and Western definition of civilization that employs a vocabulary with such terms as “pre-modern,” “primitive,” and “savage.” Civilization implies a level of cooperation among people, and the conscious attainment and passing on of knowledge to further survival. Civilization implies a higher order of thinking and acting, regardless of technological advancement or the existence of writing. It is always amazing when cultures are defined as civilized who systematically bomb innocent people, wage wars, enslave, colonize, and commit genocides. My position is that the first Humans on Earth were civilized. How and why can a group be classified as being Human, but not yet civilized, especially people who lived in peaceful and developing communities. This definition of civilization accepted by most scholars is a product of Western influenced thought. It is more sensible to speak of early civilizations and written civilizations than to speak of “primitive” and “preliterate cultures.” In fact, the ability to write can be less skillful than certain functions in early civilizations that existed before writing; such as astronomy which involves the observations of the heavens over countless generations, or medicinal herbology which involves a vast knowledge of healing properties found in plants, roots, bark, and other vegetations from Nature.
It is senseless to argue that mathematics or civilization did not originate in Afrika. Most scholars avoid or juggle with this debate. The first Humans in the world originated in Afrika at least 100,000 to 150,000 years ago, and there they began to develop the first early civilizations in the world. To the dismay of some, Afrika is the only continent where the entire chain of Human evolution can be traced back to pre-Human hominids. There in Afrika, Humans first lived in small communities where they began to observe the skies and bury their deceased. For thousands of years, they observed the changing seasons and the sun’s daily passing across the sky. They saw the blossoming of certain flowers, plants, and trees that would yield fruit and other foods. Many of the communities studied the migrating patterns of animals and knew where the most successful hunt awaited them. These communities manipulated nature to make tools for hunting, fishing, and gathering foods from nature. It was found that certain plants had medicinal properties that aided in the healing of particular ailments. Women observed the repetition of the menstrual cycle, sometimes occurring regularly with lunar appearances. A lunar calendar and seasonal calendar were created at such remote periods that the time frame escapes our knowledge. All of this occurred over the space of tens of thousands of years in Afrika alone, before humanity reached the other continents, and subsequently tens of thousands of years before the evolution of other races. One of the earliest and most advanced notions of mathematics came with the lunar calendar, and was likely a creation of Afrikan women. That Afrikan women were involved in science in Tawi is not doubted, they were also very important political administrators. The Kahun Medical Papyrus of approximately -1800, although not exclusively the only writing on the issue, is an ancient document that deals with treating female medical concerns.
It was from these early Afrikan civilizations that math was first employed in history. Math was essential in the development of the lunar and seasonal calendars. The Afrikan Ishango Bone with notches carved on it is a form of an early calendar, uses prime numbers, addition, and division. The bone is at least 20,000 years old, and was found near the borders of the present day DR Congo and Uganda. It is the world’s second oldest mathematical artifact. The world’s oldest mathematical artifact is the Lebombo Bone and is about 40,000 years old, and was found near the borders of Swaziland and South Afrika. The Lebombo Bone uses the same type of math as the Ishango Bone. The Gazette math article by Naidoo and Webb entitled “The Oldest Mathematical Artifact,” is often cited on this fact (1987).
It is important to note that after Afrikans migrated into Asia, the South Pacific Islands, and Europe; they remained Afrikan in phenotype (skin color) for tens of thousands of years, and some groups would later evolve into the other races we know today. What is fascinating about early Human migrations is that many of the early migrants did not evolved into other races at all. Subsequently, we can see the Afrikan populations in South-East Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific Islands. Millions of these Afrikans have been there for fifty thousand years or more. In fact, we know from archeological evidence, that some of the early migrants into America from Asia were Afrikans. The common migratory descendants of the ancestors of Afrikans who went into the Americas from Asia can be found in South-East Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific Islands. The pioneer researcher and world traveler, Runoko Rashidi has documented this in African Classical Civilization in the chapter “Men Out of Asia: The African Presence in Prehistoric America.”
The early Afrikans, parents of the Earth’s entire population created the first systems of passing knowledge to future generations through an educational system. As knowledge was acquired that was essential to the survival of these small communities, the children were given the task of learning it as soon as they were old enough to benefit the community.
In the top of the Nile Valley from where the rivers begin to develop, the base from where humanity sprang in Central-East Afrika, the communities became more and more organized into developing, complex societies by -5,000. At this time, migrants from the base of the Nile in Central-East Afrika and the Sahara began to settle in the broader Nile Valley. Afrikans were attracted to the Nile Valley from the Sahara as that once fertile and wet-land began to dry up. From the base of the Nile, Afrikans migrated down following the flow of the river (what we call North today). The Nile attracted Afrikan migrants because of fishing and other sources of food. The river overflowed once a year leaving a rich deposit of soil behind that was a farmers dream for planting and yielding a good harvest. Afrikans began to settle in the Nile Valley, eventually making it the most populous region of the continent by the time of dynastic Tawi.
Much of the evidence points to a massive settling of what would become Tawi from the base of the Nile. The ancients told and wrote stories of how Ausar, Aset, and Heru came from Ethiopia to settle the land and bring agriculture. The people of Tawi considered the land at the base of the Nile as their ancestral home. The four Golden Ages of Tawi were all stabilized from Pharaohs who had lineage ties to Upper Tawi/Kemet (South). The archeological discovery of the fragment from Ta-Seti shows that the Pharaoh tradition came from the South in Nubia or Kush. These early migrants developed and often brought with them into what would become Tawi (The United Two Lands of Kemet or KMT) much of the mathematics that would be the foundation of the civilization.
While Kush would often rival Tawi militarily and culturally, the most advanced mathematics and architecture would crystallize in KMT due to a more conducive environment where a lot of stone and papyrus plants were available for carving and writing the language. Also, the papyrus plant was the world’s first paper. The word “paper” has its origin from the Afrikan based word “papyrus.” The papyrus plant was skinned of the green outer-core, cut into strips, laid vertically and horizontally across each other, pounded, and dried. Depending on the color, the ink and paints of many colors were made from plants, soot, and Earthen based chemicals. The colors of Kemetic ink and paint are still brilliant today after thousands of years.
Thousands of years before the settling of Tawi before -3200, the conservative date, Afrikans who migrated to the valley had agricultural and pastoral knowledge. A minimum knowledge of basic math was necessary for such communities. In agricultural one had to be able to count, divide, and as communities grew be able to figure the volume of barely and wheat in storage from season to season. A working knowledge of astronomy and the calendar became essential, and both required ongoing mathematical computation. The pastoral communities had to count the sheep, goats, and cows. A sense of division was necessary for the distribution of food. As communities grew before the founding of dynastic Tawi, the collection of taxes became important which brought many developments to Afrikan mathematics, even an early geometry with needed knowledge of land area.
The early pre-Dynastic era is essential to a correct understanding of the history of mathematics. The Nile Valley was the world’s first complex culture, before China, India, and the Tigris-Euphrates developments. It would logically be from the world’s first high complex cultures that mathematics would see its first blossoms.

Mathematics in the First Golden Age (Old Kingdom)
As the Nile Valley became more settled, and communities grew into small towns and cities, a more complex mathematical system became necessary. With all things considered, it is no surprise that by the time of the First Dynasty we see the use of mathematical place values well into the thousands. The Pharaoh Narmer (also called Mena or Menes) united Tawi (the Two-Lands or KMT) and was the founder of all the Afrikan dynasties. Of course, the concept of a pharaoh and dynasties came before Narmer from the Ta-Seti Nubia regions. The Narmer Palette, although simple, is very revealing. On the front, Narmer is wearing the White Crown of Upper Kemet or KMT as he smites one of his enemies. His name is in Mdw Ntr (hieroglyphs) above his head. Behind Narmer stands a sandal bearer with a vase of water. Below is seen his defeated enemies. Before Narmer is the falcon symbol of Heru with a head of an enemy with 6 lotus flowers growing from an extension behind the head. The lotus flower is the place value for one thousand, and clearly the palette reads that Narmer had subdued 6,000 enemies. On the back of the palette, Narmer is seen with the Red Crown of Lower Kemet. Below are two lionesses with necks being intertwined to represent the uniting of the Two-Lands, or the beginning of the Pharaohnic era. From the Narmer palette, we see the use of high place values in math at the very beginning of dynastic Tawi -3200. It goes without saying that a complete system of values is necessary for understanding numbers as large as 6,000 and beyond.

Tawi Place Values
The Tawi/KMT place value system allowed for the understanding and manipulation of simple and complex numbers. The system was based on place value units of ten. Lines were used for the numbers 1 through 9. 10 was an opened half circle, similar to a horse shoe. 100 was an encircling rope. 1,000 was a lotus plant. 10,000 was a finger. 100,000 was a frog or tadpole. A million was a kneeling man with arms raised to heaven. This system of numbers allowed for the computations of large and small numbers. Further, the Tawi system employed a fraction/decimal system based on the different parts of the “Eye of Heru” or the Wadjat. One of the most common myths about the history of math is that the zero is an East Indian invention introduced to the world by Arabs. What culture or group of people would not understand the zero? Furthermore, in Tawi, when they wrote a number with zero as one of the place values, they very simply skipped to the next digit leaving the place for zero blank. At other times, the nefer symbol was used for zero.
The Tawi numerals, like the words in the written language, were written in three types or styles. The Mdw Ntr (hieroglyphic) type is the oldest and most common. However, in Tawi there was also the use of the two cursive scripts for writing, the hieratic and later the demotic writing style. Dr. Stephen Chrisomalsi of McGill University in Montreal recently documented how the Greeks learned their alphabetic numeral system from the Tawi demotic numeral system. The research is available in the international journal Antiquity, and it is of great interest. On the other hand, scholars such as Diop, Yosef ben-Jochannan, and others have stressed for decades that the basis of Greek writing and learning were from Kemet. It is factual, but should not be surprising that the Greek mathematicians learned their place values and concepts of mathematics from Afrika. Dr. ben-Jochannan addresses this issue in Black Man of the Nile in a section entitled “Greek Interpretation of African and Asian Philosophy” (334-336).
The Tawi mathematical system used sacred symbols, like the Mdw Ntr (writing) system. Of course the symbols were transformed into cursive with the hieratic and demotic. The written language itself was considered sacred, being the creation of the Netcher (spirit) Djhewty, who was also said to have invented mathematics. This Netcher Djhewty was drawn as a man with the head of an ibis bird, and is one of the oldest Netchers in the Nile Valley. The Tawi writing and mathematical system is spiritually based, deeply so like the Afrikan worldview in its totality. Djhewty was the male counter-part of the Netcher Ma’at. The Netcher Ma’at was the symbol of balance, among other things. Mathematics, the word we use today comes from the Greek word “mathematikos.” Yet, the Greek word has Tawi origins in the word Ma’at which means balance and harmony. Ma’at was closely related to the weighing scales with an image of her mounted at the top-center of the scales, furthering implication of the meaning balance. The spiritual element never absent in the Afrikan worldview, Ma’at is mostly associated with Truth and Righteousness. Numbers in Tawi had a deeply spiritual significance, aside from their very practical use in architecture, taxes, land surveying for irrigation and floods, and pure education.
The scale itself is worth mention. The scale was invented in the Nile. It was accurate enough to detect the slightest differences in weights. An entire system of weights and measures were thus created due to the practice of weighing for trade, taxes, and the distribution of items. This practice of switching the amounts of weight on the scale assisted the development of algebraic thought and written equations.

The Afrikan Calendar
From the Temple of Dendera, we see a fine example of the spiritual significance of numbers and math in Tawi. In the ceiling of the Temple, before it was dynamited down by Napoleon in 1799, there was carved a circle of the heavens/universe. From this carving we see the division of the circle into 360 degrees represented by 36 decans, each being one of the Tawi 10 day weeks. The Tawi calendar was 365.25 days, in other words the calendar we use today around the world is an Afrikan calendar. The last five days in the Tawi year were festive days of celebration. The 12 months of the year are shown in the Dendera calendar, and the 12 zodiacs are shown. Planets and stars are shown. The division of the day into 24 hours is also present on the carving. The calendar was central to the numerological-based spiritual system. At the end of the Tawi year, creation was honored in celebrating a day for what was believed to be the first people in the world Ausar, Aset, Set, Neb-Het, and Heru. The Temple is said to have been built at the very late Ptolemaic period, yet the architecture, literature, and many, many other carvings in Tawi/Kemet ensures the distinctly Afrikan creation of the Temple and the knowledge composed in it. Tony Browder’s Nile Valley Contribution to Civilization outlines the significance of the Calendar from Dendera (79). John G. Jackson discusses the calendar in his major work Introduction to African Civilizations (134-146).

Timekeeping
Several methods of timekeeping were developed in Tawi. The solar, lunar, and stellar calendars were all used for yearly timekeeping. The tekhen (obelisk) was a timekeeping structure as well as a spiritual symbol. The very accurate water clock, an artistic bowel or cup shaped instrument with markings on it was used to tell time as the water dripped out. The water clock was used for hourly time keeping. The round and bar shaped sundial, also called shadow clocks, were both Afrikan Tawi inventions. These measured the shadow cast by the sun as it moved across the sky, like the tekhen, and were used for daily timekeeping in hours depending on the length of the shadow on the instrument. Timekeeping had been perfected in the Nile from the year, month, week, day, hour, minute, down to the second. From the drips of the water clock, the second was arrived at in concept. The year of 360 units, plus 5, was divided into the smallest unit. The word “hour” even comes from the Netcher Heru. It is the least to state that a high competence of mathematics was necessary for the ancient Afrikans to reach this understanding. John Pappademos has a very excellent article entitled “An Outline of Africa’s Role in the History of Physics” published in Blacks in Science by Ivan Van Sertima. Among other subjects, Pappademos explains the Afrikan contribution to timekeeping and invention of timekeeping devices.

To the Egyptians we owe the concepts of most of the fundamental physical quantities; distance, area, volume, weight, and time. Europe is indebted to Egypt for the invention of standards, units, and methods for accurate measurements of all of these quantities... they (the Egyptians) could compute the areas and volumes of abstract geometric figures, including the circle’s area accurate to 0.06% (Pappademous, 184).

Architectural Tools
Pappademous discusses the Tawi measuring ruler. The Afrikans of the Nile invented the measuring ruler and other mathematical instruments still used today. “The ancient Egyptian primary unit of length was the cubit - the length of the forearm. Thus the hieroglyphic sign for the cubit was the forearm and all subdivisions of fingers, palms, great and little spans and the foot” (186). Eventually, this system of measure would be changed into today’s units of measure. Diop notes the Afrikan measuring ruler in Civilization or Barbarism (259). Aside from the scale and ruler, Afrikans invented other instruments for architectural design still used today. The chisel, wedge, pickax, crowbar, and hammer were all used in Tawi. Afrikans in Tawi invented the A shaped square level with plumb bobs, which were wooden right angles with a string and weight hanging down the middle to create a vertical line. The other type of level was a vertical board with two short steps extending from it on the upper half, and hanging over it was the plumb line and weight at the end. The instruments made sure architectural projects were precisely level and vertical into minute fractions of an inch, and it is obvious that they were used very early from the precision of the Great Pyramids in the Fourth Dynasty. For more detail, I refer the reader to the work of Dieter Arnold entitled Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry. Shown from the tomb of Sennedjem (or Sennejem), the great mathematician and architect of the 19th Dynasty under the Pharaohs Seti and Rameses the Great, the wooden right angle, or “builder’s square,” was used without a line on it for design and architecture. Again, this is another instrument common still today.
A modified square level/plumb bob called the groma or gruma (sometimes called a surveyor’s cross today) was invented in Tawi. The surveyor’s cross was used to survey and plot large areas of land into equal distributions, as it is used in construction and land surveying today with the square level. Another modification with the plumb line was used for astronomical observations. The Greeks and Romans learned to survey land from being in the Nile Valley, and they used the Afrikan tools for the same purposes.
Although only a very limited part of the book addresses Afrikan mathematics, David E. Smith’s History of Mathematics is worth mention. He notes the Roman use of the groma, without mention of its origins (124). Smith notes “groma” is from the word “gnomon,” a distinctly KMT (or Mdw Ntr) word. The Greeks called shadow clocks or sundials gnomons, after witnessing the use of the devices in Kemet. The Romans would also learn of the use of this Afrikan instrument, which eventually led to today’s clocks.
Smith says, “Whatever claims may properly be made for the antiquity of mathematics in various countries, claims of even greater validity can justly be made for the science in Egypt” (41). Smith notes census taking (or population counting) for taxation in Kemet, the plumb line in astronomical observations, discusses the Ahmose Mathematical Papyrus, and the sundial (46-50). The plain wooden right angles were useful in construction, and were a common tool in building as many paintings of Afrikan life show us from the Nile.
The Afrikans used rope on land measurements, sometimes knotted, rolled on a wooden handle for the same purposes that measuring tape is used today. The ropes were likely not used on buildings where more precise calculations were arrived. Yet, discoveries of some of these ancient ropes reveal another of many examples of the Theorem wrongly attributed to Pythagoras. For land surveying, the Afrikans would make a 3-4-5 right triangle, or one with lengths of the sides distributed along the numbers 3, 4, and 5. The 3-4-5 triangle is the very foundation of the formula a2+b2=c2 where a and b squared are the sides of a right triangle and c is the hypotenuse squared opposite the right angle, which is the Theorem (Tawi Theorem). James Newman, who also has a very limited study of Afrikan mathematics, states, “But the Egyptian skill in practical geometry went far beyond the construction of right angles: for it included, besides the angles of a square, the angles of other regular figures such as the pentagon, the hexagon and the heptagon” (The World of Mathematics, 80). From Kemetic geometry and architecture we can see the origins of all of the so-called Platonic solids, and need we not forget that Plato studied in Kemet for over a decade.

Architecture and Mathematics
Although not used for timekeeping, but reflecting a high level of architectural and mathematical knowledge are the massive Afrikan columns. They came into use during the Old Kingdom period, and not only influenced architecture in Greece and Rome, but all around the world. One can go to Washington DC, Rome, and many other places to witness the Afrikan KMT influence on world architecture. It is astounding to realize that the Afrikans of Kemet/Tawi frequently moved carefully sculptured stones weighing tons with relative ease using no modern construction technology equipment. Some people even believe that Europeans or aliens built the KMT/Tawi monuments. Others argue that Tawi was a slave based culture and Hebrew slaves built the pyramids and monuments. All claims are ridiculous. The monuments of Tawi were built by skill, genius, and precision of Afrikan mathematical-scientific architects and paid workers. This is known because the burial sites of architects have been found. There are also paintings of Afrikans constructing monuments and moving enormous statues. Use of sledges, levers, rockers, ropes, rollers, ramps, man and animal power for pulling and pushing guided with a sound understanding of mathematics, geometry, and physics by supervisors got the work done. The wheel had very limited use in Tawi. It was attached to the base of a scaffolding ladder, the type that would have been used to carve and paint images hundreds of feet in the air on monuments. The wheels would be locked once the scaffold was in place (see Lumpkin’s “The Pyramids: Ancient Showcase of African Science and Technology” in Black in Science, edited by Van Sertima, 80 and 81).
The Afrikans of Tawi made blueprints before they undertook building projects. This was a revolutionary idea in architecture, and it seems that the Afrikans of Tawi never undertook building projects without at least an external blueprint on grid of the design to be built. The land was studied, labor was divided, and material was selected. Experienced professionals in mathematics and architecture worked for the state who supervised the building. These architects became very well-known in their times and enjoyed frequent company with the Pharaoh.
As Pappademos notes, because of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, looting and plundering throughout Tawi over the years, we do not know the names of these very important figures in Afrikan history (Blacks in Science, 183). Senmut or Senenmut, Sennedjem, and Imhotep are exceptions.
Senenmut’s most famous building project was the burial Temple of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut. It was cut with great precision out of the side of a rock mountain. The Afrikans had tools (non-electric) used to break and chisel away large amounts of rocks. They also possessed metal and stone tools (non-electric) used to cut and drill through stones. The remains of cut and drilled stones can be seen today.
Imhotep of the Third Dynasty of Tawi was the most well-known of all architects. Without doubt, the architects of the Great Pyramids must have received as much acclaim or more in their lifetimes and afterwards. Imhotep was employed under the reign of the Pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep revolutionized building in the ancient world. Mastabas, some made in mudbricks and others in stones, were used as burial chambers. Imhotep built a series of mastabas on top of each other. From an architectural tradition founded by the culture to which he belonged, and his ancestors, Imhotep built the first stone high-rise in the world. His Step Pyramid for Djoser stood over 200 feet in the air. It was complete with buildings near it, underground chambers, and a massive wall enclosing the entire complex. Imhotep was not of royal birth, but he was deified for thousands of years after his physical death.
The architect(s) of Amenemhet III built a labyrinth during his near five decade reign. This labyrinth was the largest building in ancient history. It was reported to have 3,000 rooms with 1,500 being below ground and 1,500 being above ground. The building does not stand today, but the architect(s) must have been treated with great admiration.
The most impressive and mathematically accurate pyramids are the Great Pyramids. There are three of them on the Giza plateau built for the Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkare of the Fourth Dynasty about 5,000 years ago. The largest pyramid is the one dedicated to Khufu, rising nearly 500 feet with an enormous 13 acre base. With perfect right angles, directed one degree from true North, sides facing the cardinal direction, with over 2 million massive stones weighing an average of 2.5 tons, the Great Pyramid is a mathematical and scientific wonder. All of the pyramids were completely enclosed in polished limestones weighing tons themselves and positioned to incorporate what is erroneously called the “Pythagorean” Theorem over 2,000 years before Pythagoras was born. I think it best if it is referred to as the KMT or Tawi Theorem! The Great Pyramid is supposedly the only of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world still standing, but in Kemet there are many wonders of the ancient world still standing.
As much as Kemet/Tawi fascinates the present day world, it did more with the ancient world. Scholars from throughout the ancient world thirsted for the deep fountains of knowledge in this Afrikan land. The Afrikans of Tawi dazzled themselves and others. Consider the following:

Garden design and town planning are other aspects of Egyptian architecture. The Egyptians had a great fondness for gardens. Even the poor managed to plant a tree or two in the narrow courtyards of their houses. When they were rich, their gardens rivaled their residences in size and luxury. The garden was arranged around the [manmade] pool or pools, for there could be several of them. They served as fish ponds, as reservoirs for watering and as a source of cooling fresh air for the house near by. Frequently, the master of the house had a light wooden pavilion built near the pool where he [or she] could come for a breath of fresh air in the evening and receive friends for cold drinks (UNESCO, VII, 114-115).

Some of these pools, such as the ones built during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Snefru (Senefru), were large enough to sail a boat on with a crew during moments of leisure. At least some Pharaohs would build pools and lakes for their queens.

Afrikan Mathematical Documents
A fraction of a percent of the writing on papyrus has survived the ruins of time and bandits. Yet, what has come down to us is of great interest and challenging to the current understanding of the disciplines of learning. Afrikan papyrus documents in science, literature, medicine, and mathematics have leaped forward in time to destroy the myths about European supremacy in thought, intellect, and education. Among the most interesting documents found in Tawi is the Ahmose Mathematical Papyrus from the 15th Dynasty, and it is the most detailed discovery in Tawi math. The scribe and mathematician Ahmose stated that he was not the author of the document, but that it was a work from his ancestors in the 12th Dynasty 200 years prior to his time. Still, from the writing of the text, it is clear that parts of it were from the time of the Great Pyramids when such mathematics would have been essential for such building projects. This act of not claiming authorship was a common practice among writers in KMT (Tawi, Kemet). They did not claim authorship, but gave the credit of their writings to the ancestors. The Ahmose Mathematical Papyrus is approximately dated at -2,000, or about 4,000 years old. It is the world’s oldest mathematical textbook to date. Charles Finch describes the papyrus as the world’s foundation text in mathematical science.
A second and very important document is the “Moscow” Mathematical Papyrus, named as such because it is in a Moscow museum. The name of the scribe-mathematician is not known. It is not as complete as the Ahmose text, but is of great importance in the world’s history of mathematics. It dates to the Middle Kingdom or the Third Golden Age. Both documents are between -2000 and -1750.
In Civilization or Barbarism by Cheikh Anta Diop, a chapter entitled “Africa’s Contribution: Science,” there is some detailed information about the Afrikan foundations to mathematics and the Afrikan methods and formulas used to solve problems. Primarily, Diop uses information about the Ahmose and “Moscow” papyri. Diop takes a close look at Tawi arithmetic, geometry, algebra, trigonometry, and other related areas. I recommend this section of his cornerstone work for further study. Diop references T. Eric Peet’s “A Problem in Egyptian Geometry” in the Journal of Egyptian Archeology; Peet’s The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus; RJ Gilling’s Mathematics in the Time of the Pharaohs; and other interesting works that he does not hesitate to critique.
In Kemet, the mathematicians were very accustomed to working with fractions/decimals, unknown variables, square roots, equations, and irrational numbers. They had formulas for solving the areas of squares, triangles, circles, quadrants of circles, and surface of spheres. They had formulas to figure out the volumes of pyramids, truncated pyramids, and various geometric shapes. Diop does an excellent work in showing where the Greeks derived their methods in mathematics. Diop also deals with astronomy, medicine, chemistry, and other subjects.
A very excellent article by Beatrice Lumpkin can be found in Egypt: Child of Africa, edited by Ivan Van Sertima. The article is entitled “Mathematics and Engineering in the Nile Valley.” She notes that the use of the grid for architectural design and art began in Kemet. The use of the square grid in KMT (Tawi, Kemet) before the design was drawn was obviously to ensure accurate proportions and measurements in the actual building project. Lumpkin not only makes note of Tawi fractions, arithmetic, geometry, and trigonometry; but she also makes note of a problem by Ahmose in which a method of “Aha Calculus” is used to find an answer to an equation with the “false position” method. Lumpkin sites her own work, Senefer and Hatshepsut in noting the development of the Kemetic/Tawi Theorem of right angles, wrongly associated with Pythagoras who studied in the Afrikan Nile for over two decades. She also notes that the Arabs introduced knowledge into Europe that they had acquired from Afrika, directly and indirectly. In her conclusion, Lumpkin sums up the significance of her work, and the significance of why we Afrikan people must recover the mathematical genius introduced into the world by our ancestors. She says:

Now suppressed, this [mathematical and scientific] genius will be free to produce again when there will be peace and freedom from imperialist oppression. Here, the true history of the achievements of the Nile Valley civilization can play a liberating role by restoring the sense of continuity and identity with a great past, pointing to a great future. In particular, knowledge of the mathematical achievements can help allay “math anxiety” among the descendents of the Nile Valley people in Africa and in the Americas (339).

Conclusion
Elementary to university level education is the only way such basic to advanced methods were taught to children and adults in Tawi/Kemet. This classical Afrikan nation had a literate culture, and education was not limited to the priestly or royal as so many have erroneously claimed. Jacob Carruthers discusses Kemetic education in the essay “African-Centered Education” of the work Intellectual Warfare (257-259). Asa Hilliard has two essays on the Afrikan University of Waset in Kemet. One essay is in The Maroon Within US and the other is published by the Journal of African Civilization in Egypt Revisted, and is entitled “Waset, the Eye of Ra and the Abode of Maat.” Kemet was the world’s first librarian culture with institutions at Waset (Thebes) and many of the other cities along the Nile. Tawi/Kemet, the Two-Lands, was also the world’s first university based culture. Much of the physical structure of the university of Ipet Isut in Waset dates to the New Kingdom around -1550, or 3,550 years ago. Yet, the foundations of all the subject areas studied at Ipet Isut were thousands of years older than the physical building, as Hilliard notes. The University/Temple of Ipet Isut was a center of the nation’s network of educational institutions, many of the past shadows of which can be seen today. Mathematics was a central part to the Nile Valley educational system. All children were required to learn the basic education, and depending on one’s occupation, one would learn more a certain areas of learning. Math was not only studied as an abstracted subject, but was relevant to the Afrikan understanding of not only the universe, but also the soul. That’s why such meticulous care was given to the construction of temples, monuments, and pyramids. These architectural structures were built on Afrikan Spiritual principles of time and dimensions transmitted down thousands of years by the ancestors. Math was part of Maat, or balancing the person and the person’s inner self. Maat, in the company of Djhewty, was central to balancing the community and the nation. The physical structures built by Afrikans were meant to reflect the soul of the people and divinity of the spirit world.
As Beatrice Lumpkin stated, understanding the true history of Afrikan mathematics will be liberating. Afrikan children, and adults, taught mathematics through the historical and cultural lenses of their reality will not only do better academically; mathematics properly taught to Afrikan people will direct us to the great significance of the subject. Math is essential in the building of an economy or economies, or a nation or nations. This is why we must abandon the false methods of teaching and learning mathematics that have been common for too long, that have failed many of our children for too long. A new learning process must take place for the student and the teacher. With teachers grounded in Afrikan mathematics, the subject must be introduced to our children with the understanding that their ancestors are the people who gave math to the world. This is of central importance at the K-12 grade levels. The beginning of any mathematics class should include the Afrikan background to the subject. Separate classes from high school to the university should deal specifically with the Afrikan foundations of mathematical science and other disciplines of learning. Any class on math, properly taught, would in a number of areas deal with the Afrikan background, directly or indirectly. Any class taught on mathematics must take some time to correct many of the false concepts that have been so ingrained in the minds of students and teachers. We must also remember that in all subjects, as our ancestors along the Nile understood, learning is not only for the mind but also the soul.
When Afrikan children are taught the true foundations of the subject, they will excel beyond our expectations. The study of history is not only so that we may feel of significance about our past, but more importantly to look to the great examples of what we are capable of achieving today and in the future. Afrikans built the foremost civilization in the ancient world, a righteous and moral based civilization, and Afrikan people have the capacity to do no less today.

AFRIKAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2009-08-06T03:44:00.002-04:00

Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
AFRIKAN-CENTERED SBAYT: Education for Liberation
Chapter 10
AFRIKAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Galen perpetually cite the prescriptions that they received from the Egyptian physicians, or more specifically, as Galen says, that they had learned by consulting the works conserved in the library of the Temple of Imhotep at Memphis [in Egypt in Afrika], which was still accessible in the second century A.D., and where, seven centuries before, Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine,’ was taught (Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, 283).

Introduction

At a bookstore in Chicago, many years ago, I saw a text starring at me edited by Ivan Van Sertima entitled Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. Since then, I have always kept a copy or two in my library. Like everyone else, I was all but wholly unfamiliar with the Afrikan contribution and foundation of science. I grew up, like all mis-educated people, thinking that Europeans brought knowledge of the sciences to a backward people in Afrika. Reading the book, the truth began to slowly erode away years of lies that had been implanted in my mind as an Afrikan child. The essays in Van Sertima’s book were my introduction to Afrikan science.
In the educational school systems of America, and throughout the world, children are not taught an inkling about Afrika’s contribution to the sciences. They are left to think that the advances in science happened in Greece and Rome, and peripherally among non-whites. Of course, the Afrikan contribution and background to those civilizations are conveniently deleted. The Afrikan child is predictably left with a sense of innate inferiority about the capabilities of her or his own ancestors, and consequently her or his own race today. The error in curriculum and instruction is on the one hand that Afrikans are not inferior, whether we made contributions to science or not. On the other hand, the error is that what we call “education” would better fit the label “indoctrination” because it is false yet serves the purpose of instilling a damaging sense of identity in the Afrikan child. Ancient and modern Afrika, and Afrikan people throughout the world not only have made major contributions in the sciences, but also it was from the deep fountains of Afrika that what we call “science” had its very origin.

A New View on Science

Raymond Webster, author of African American First in Science and Technology, explained to me that after closely reviewing literally thousands of Black Studies courses across the country only four had some background on the Black contribution/foundation to the sciences. The tragedy is that the Black Studies movement should be at the cutting edge of the subject. It points to the great need for research and instruction in Afrikan science and mathematics that must take place. In addition to that, Raymond Webster agreed when I said that the teacher must be retrained in this subject area we call science. In fact, the teacher must be retained overall.
The purpose of this essay is to provide an introductory method of approach to Afrikan science in the instructional and curriculum building of the educational process. How should we teach Afrikan science? Out of profound ignorance, racism, or both, many have even doubted that such a thing as Afrikan science even exists in the first place. This myth will be dealt with in the proceeding pages. The concern of instructional methodology in properly teaching our children is the primary objective. Also, debunking the myths of Afrikan inferiority is of great importance.
Afrika not only contributed to science, but science began in Afrika. Again, as we have cited in other essays, and as so many experts and scholars have proven, humanity began in Afrika circa 150,000 years ago when no other races where on the planet. For Afrikan people, this fact beams with racial pride due to the history of suffering from oppression, slavery, and racism. The “Afrikan Law of Primacy” is based on the Afrikan being the first in the world. That is simple. If Afrikan people where the first people on Earth, we naturally had a headstart among others to develop civilization, in the case of this essay – science.
Concerning Afrikan primacy, what has the world-renowned scholar Ivan Van Sertima explained? Relying on the Journal of Afrikan Civilization, in the monumental work Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, Van Sertima stated:

Five centuries of these falsehoods have been exploded in just five years. These years have seen the discovery of African steel-smelting in Tanzania 1,500-2,000 years ago, an astronomical observatory in Kenya 300 years before Christ, the cultivation of cereal and other crops by Africans in the Nile Valley 7,000 years before any other civilization, the domestication of cattle in Kenya 15,000 years ago, the domestic use of fire by Africans 1,400,000 years ago (one million years before its first known use in China) the use of tetracycline by an ancient African population fourteen centuries ago, an African glider-plane 2,300 years old… (5)

Afrikan civilization was no bystander with the development of the sciences. In fact, Afrikan civilization was front and center stage. Throughout the history of science, Afrikans have always made major contributions. Modern times have been no exception. Afrikan people in America and around the world have made major contributions to the fields of science in the industrial revolution, agricultural science, engineering, telecommunications, transportation, safety, the medical field, the computer age, space exploration, and more.
In Intellectual Warfare, Jacob Carruthers notes that Afrikan-Centered education is not myth making, but restoring honesty to the curriculum. Centuries of white supremacy has distorted the educational process and today damages Afrikan children. Correcting this process is not simply the including of Afrikan contributions, but exposing falsehoods and why the falsehoods were/are accepted in the first place. True education deals with power, and if our Afrikan children are to be educated into power, we must teach them ourselves.
On the question of science, Carruthers underlines the significance of the following research when he states:

Today, science and education ignores the fact that the ancient Egyptians were considered by individuals such as Aristotle and Francis Bacon to be the founders of mathematics and certain sciences. Ignoring the Egyptian mathematical and medical texts, while still explaining the impact of Euclid and Pythagoras on geometry is a clear case of unacceptable Eurocentrism. Highlighting the Hypocratic Oath, while ignoring the medicine and surgery of the ancient Egyptians, is yet another example. In fact, one can take science and mathematics from elementary school through the Ph.D. degree and never learn that a single African contributed one idea to either science or mathematics (97).

This essay will overview some of the major advances and contributions of Afrikan science to world civilization. Although mathematics is a science, there will be very little discussion in this essay on that subject. An entire essay has been dedicated to the subject of Afrikan mathematics. The areas of exploration will be threefold, at least. The Nile Valley contribution to science, especially Tawi, will be considered. This essay will have some discussion on Afrikan science outside of the Nile in the greater continental body of Afrika. The last major area of focus will overview the Afrikan American contribution to science.

The “Scientific Method”

It would only be proper to begin our research with what has been called the “Scientific Method.” The scientific method is considered one of the groundbreaking pathways to modern science that separated arriving at a process through reasoning, experimentation, and the collection of data. Observation is the necessary beginning in order to derive at a workable hypothesis, collect data, and gain some scientific reasoning along the way.
We have all been wrongfully taught that modern science had its’ roots in Greece and Rome. It is wrongfully taught that the scientific method began in Europe with Roger Bacon, the English philosopher of the 13th century, Copernicus the Polish astronomer of the 16th century, Galileo Galilei, and/or Francis Bacon. All cultures who have developed any great buildings and monuments, domesticated crops, smelted metal of any kind, developed different paints and dyes, built boats or ocean-going ships, understood astronomy, found ways to treat illnesses, etc. have all used the scientific method. It is through the human mind, which evolved in Afrika, and later impacted all the civilizations of the world that the scientific method exists. No one people or culture created the scientific method, it is a human function of thought and processing. It is only through a system of mis-education that anyone would teach about a European creation of a human reality called the scientific method. After considering the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Aztec and Mayan calendar, the temples of India, the astronomy of the Babylonians, how could one honestly say that only Europeans developed the scientific method?
The argument is that the separation of science from myth and the spiritual cosmos began to happen in Greece and continued to develop in Europe. This is a cultural argument since the European worldview is less spiritually connected to the universe than other cultures. The argument is also racially biased because there are many other cultures who have made great advances in science. The scientific method is a human method of approaching a process. It is wrong to argue that it belongs solely to Europe or Afrika. To say that someone is human, but devoid of the scientific process is to say that they are inferior. In fact, it can be argued, the scientific method can be found in many animals. The human brain is and has always been capable of the scientific process. You cannot build a civilization, high arts and science, without the scientific process. Also, let us remember that the European was late in comparison to the other civilizations of the ancient world in their development.
Now, not only does common sense tell us that any people who built great monuments, developed their arts, and made contributions to the sciences, had to have fully understood a scientific method/approach to their projects. In addition to that, our great scholar Theophile Obenga has re-translated the The Ahmose Mathematical Papyrus and found therein the Scientific Method 4,000 years old. In other words, Afrikans have left the physical evidence of understanding the scientific method, and they left the first ever documented source in the Ahmose Papyrus of knowing and using the scientific method over 1,000 years before the Greeks went to the Nile Valley to learn science, and over 3,500 years before Francis Bacon was born. For Obenga’s translation, the reader is referred to “‘The’ Scientific Method from Kemet to Greece” in Egypt: Child of Africa edited by Ivan Van Sertima (283). The Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus will be discussed later, and in it is a very scientific approach/scientific method to treating 48 cases of injury through examination, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
To the Afrikan of Kemet and elsewhere, science and spirituality do not contradict each other. There is a balance between Afrikan Spirituality and science. From the Great Pyramids of Giza, to smelting of gold from Nubia, to the observatories of Kenya, the Dogon astronomers of Mali, and the medicines of the Congo basin and beyond, Afrikan Spirituality and science are more often than not interlinked. The question of “pure” science is settled when we consider one fact. The Afrikan led the world in science and taught the first “civilized” Europeans, the Greeks, what they knew. Still, there are unanswered questions that surround the development and advancement of Afrikan science such as the astronomers of the Nile, the Dogon astronomers, the architecture of Tawi, the massive libraries of Tawi, the surgical doctors of Timbuktu, the steel-producing blast furnaces of Tanzania, the widespread practice of Afrikan navigation for millenniums, and much more. Only a fool or a racist, or both, would claim that the Afrikan made no contributions to science. Let us take a closer look.

Agriculture

Agricultural science is the one advancement in humanity that has probably changed the course of history more so than any other. The primary preoccupation with early societies was the gathering of food and hunting. The refinements of the arts and sciences were limited to the time constraints necessary to have the essentials of survival, food and water. With the development of agricultural science, specifically a “class” devoted to food production, the arts and sciences could only become developed to unprecedented levels. All cultures have contributed to agricultural science and food production in one way or another. The exchange of crop foods is a global interaction. Dishes are shared among many cultures. Ideas for scientific farming come from many societies. This must be acknowledged by any study that is not prejudiced. At the same time, the development in early agricultural science, that would eventually reach throughout the entire world, began in one place, the Afrikan Nile Valley. The historic phenomenon that has helped the advance of the entire world is owed to the Afrikan agriculturalist of tens of thousands of years ago. What is the evidence?
Again, one book that should be part of the class of every science teacher is Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, edited by Ivan Van Sertima. Fred Wendorf should be a world-renowned anthropologist today, on the scale of a Louis Leakey. The problem is that Leakey’s fossil finds could not be ignored because of its implications to the Afrikan origins of Humans. Wendorf’s finds could be marginalized or ignored, and that has occurred. Wendorf’s finds on the origins of agriculture are not as explosive as the origins of Humans, but it is just as pertinent to world history.
In Blacks in Science, Fred Wendorf, Romuald Schild, and Angela Close have an entry entitled “An Ancient Harvest on the Nile,” originally published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the magazine Science. The authors reported that the move from hunting and gathering societies to settled, larger communities with a higher attainment of the arts and sciences was not as clear-cut as is often taught. With knowledge of farming, the early communities still hunted and gathered for thousands of years (58). Also, strong evidence was noted that the idea of farming beginning in Asia about 10,000 years ago is just an idea and nothing more. Concerning the Afrikan origins of farming, and the unsubstantiated idea of an Asian origin, the anthropologist reports the following:

Our excavations at Wadi Kubbaniya, a desolate region in Egypt’s Western Desert, throw all this into doubt. We have found that, between 17,000 and 18,500 years ago – while ice still covered much of Europe – African people were already raising crops of wheat, barley, lentils, chick-peas, capers, and dates. They were doing it in the floodplains of the Nile, much as people would continue to do for another 13,000 years until the classical Egyptian civilization arose, and on into modern times (58).

The evidence points to an early form of agriculture where the farmers waited for the Nile River to recede and leave its rich silt deposits. They used this rich topsoil to plant some of the earliest crops that Afrika would give to the world. This basic practice led to the domestication of the world’s first crops and the development of the ancients’ most advanced civilization.
With a surplus of food, other classes of men and women could focus their crafts and talents on other areas. Slowly, over the course of thousands of years, but ahead of the other civilizations from what all evidence informs us, Afrikan Nile Valley civilization and science began to develop until it reached its classical stage in Tawi (Kemet). Let us be very clear about what the evidence informs us in the greater context. Afrikan migrants from the beginning of the Nile waters migrated upstream over time, and they began to build the fountain, mother civilization for Afrika, and the ancient world

Medical Science

The Nile Valley Afrikans developed a very sound medical field that was acknowledged throughout the ancient world. Tawi/KMT was a veritable intellectual center of the ancient world, and the same applies for the field of medicine. The Afrikans of Kemet were advanced in bone setting, surgery, herbal remedies, circumcision, gynecology, dentistry, autopsy, and anatomy. Capsules were used, birth detection, contraception, and pulse taking were common in the medical profession. Health was taken very seriously in Kemet (Tawi). In addition to bathing, they cut all body hair to ensure good hygiene. Nutrition was understood to be central to well-being and vitality in life. Certain papyri show a modern approach to medical science in which a diagnosis was made and then the problem or disease was treated.
Cheikh Anta Diop, in the chapter “Africa’s Contribution to Humanity in Sciences and in Philosophy” of the book Civilization or Barbarism, states the following:

Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Galen perpetually cite the prescriptions that they received from the Egyptian physicians, or more specifically, as Galen says, that they had learned by consulting the works conserved in the library of the Temple of Imhotep at Memphis, which was still accessible in the second century A.D., and where seven centuries, Hippocrates, the “father of medicine,” was taught (283).

It must be acknowledged that the Afrikans of Tawi/KMT believed that disharmony with the spiritual world caused most illnesses. Thus, the individual received physical and sometimes spiritual treatment. Those in the modern medical field looked down on such healing in traditional societies, especially in the Afrikan field of medicine. Now, however, many studies conducted by different universities and hospitals have recently surfaced that give evidence to the power of belief in the healing process of physical ailments.
Allow me to rely on the wonderful research of Charles Finch who has done painstaking work to document Afrikan medical science. In the insightful book, The African Background to Medical Science by Charles Finch, he quotes Homer’s statement that “In medical knowledge, Egypt leaves the rest of the world behind.” Finch’s book is all the more significant because he is a medical doctor. He has a very informative essay entitled “Imhotep the Physician: Archetype of the Great Man.” Imhotep is often called the “world’s first multi-genius” because he was an architect, scribe and sage, priest, astronomer, Vizier to the nation under the Pharaoh, and among his many titles he was also a doctor. However, Imhotep was not the first physician or the first documented physician. Afrikan medical science goes back tens of thousands of years. In addition to that, the first documented physician was Athothis, the second Pharaoh of the First Dynasty who wrote a treatise on anatomy (153 and 202). In his book, Finch has two essays that deal with Afrikan medical science, one “The African Background of Medical Science,” and the other “Science and Symbol in Egyptian Medicine.”
Finch’s essay “The African Background of Medical Science” is a brief yet general study on Afrikan medicine. He notes the significance of the most important medical papyri to survive from Tawi, the Ebers and Edwin Smith Papyri, but from those papyri and others, and what we know about the civilization, thousands of medical books must have been written. Finch notes that through a rigorous training process, the doctors of Tawi were skilled at the task of treating hundreds of different bodily ailments. “Like all African peoples, the Egyptians had a large material medica, using as many as 1000 animal, plant, and mineral products in the treatment of illness” (127). The ancient Afrikans of the Nile even “dispensed their prescriptions as pills, enemas, suppositories, infusions, and elixirs in accurate, standardized doses, causing some to wonder if they had separate pharmacies and pharmacists” (127).
Finch notes Afrikan medical science beyond Tawi. He notes the surgical skill of the Banyoro of Uganda. In particular, he discusses the Caesarean section operation among these Afrikans that was carried out with great success at a time when women in Europe did not survive this operation as it was done only to save the child (135-136). All Afrikan societies have a large pharmacopeia. The Zulus, Finch notes, use 700 different plants for various illnesses. Afrikans have developed effective herbal remedies for many of the ailments we complain about ourselves today.
The other essay by Charles Finch is “Science and Symbol in Egyptian Medicine.” This essay takes an eye-opening look at the ancient Afrikan medical treatise known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus. Based on his years of research, Finch states “The level of medical science revealed in the Edwin Smith Papyrus makes it the most remarkable medical document to survive from antiquity” (146). The Smith Medical Papyrus displayed an extensive knowledge of cranial, skeletal, and internal anatomy among this ancient Afrikan culture. The surgical skill of the doctors was likewise advanced. The medical document has 48 medical cases. Very modern, each case involves an examination, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment - if possible.
Just as every student learns about the myth of Hippocrates being the “Father of Medicine,” and the falsified Greek origin of modern medicine, the truth must be taught. Modern medicine, along with the Greeks, benefited tremendously from the Afrikan foundation in the Nile Valley. The first specialized physicians in the world were Afrikans, and they were very skilled in their professions. Every child should know that because it is an historic fact. The Afrikan child should especially know this because it would begin to widen the aspirations of children who have been mis-educated for far too long. Afrikan-Centered education is based on honesty and facts. As was noted earlier, we can’t present on only contributions, leave lies and myths in the teaching and learning process, and then call that multi-cultural.

Astronomy

Astronomy in the Nile tells so much about the civilization. We learn about their ancient understanding of the laws that govern the universe. We are informed about the mathematical-astronomical science that still benefits the world today. We gain an appreciation for the spirituality of the people. Lastly, we learn about the chronology of the civilization itself.
The physical science of astronomy, like life on Earth, was believed to be governed by the order of Ma’at. It was believed that the same force which caused the planets to be suspended in space, that made the sun give heat, that brought the Nile’s flood, is the same force or spirit that gave peace to the lives of people. Ma’at was not only the basis of astronomy, but of all the sciences, indeed of life itself.
Naturally, because the first Humans were in Afrika, Afrikans were the first astronomers. In addition to being the only astronomers for tens of thousands of years, Afrikans made advances in the study of astronomy that we still benefit from today. The first lunar, solar, stellar, and seasonal calendars were all first used by Afrikans. Beyond that, the calendar achieved such an accuracy that it is impressive today. Certain Afrikan astronomical, astrological, and spiritual concepts are still with us today. It was from the Afrikan Nile Valley that the year was divided into twelve months with twelve zodiac signs. It was again the Afrikans of the Nile Valley that separated the months into weeks, the weeks into days, the days into hours, and the hours into seconds (Pappademos’ “An Outline of Africa’s Role in the History of Physics,” Blacks in Science, 187: Finch’s The African Background to Medical Science, 145: Browder’s Nile Valley Contribution to Civilization, 78-80). It was the Afrikan water-clock that gave the notion to divide the hour into seconds.
From the Temple of Het-Heru of Dendera, we can see a later form of the Afrikan zodiac calendar that birthed the very zodiac system we use today with all twelve signs. We can see the division of the circle into 360 degrees or days. The Afrikans understood well the need to add five additional days, and the leap year was also known and understood. The Dendera zodiac calendar is one piece of evidence that informs us that the 365 ¼ day calendar that is presently used throughout the world is from Afrika. Our very concept of timekeeping is from the Afrikan Nile Valley, and so very, very few people know that fact.
Afrikan ethnic groups throughout the continent have astronomers, but the Dogon of Mali offers an interesting point of study with Afrikan astronomy. For centuries the Dogon had an intricate knowledge of the solar system. The source of note on Dogon astronomy is Pale Fox by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. Among other things, the Dogon had a sound knowledge of the Sirius star system for centuries. This star system could only be seen with advanced telescopes, and thus several theories have cropped up about how the Dogon possessed this knowledge. In Blacks in Science, Ivan Van Sertima notes “The Russians have found crystal lenses, perfectly spherical and of great precision, in ancient Egypt, during the African-dominated period” (13). In the same text, Hunter Adams notes that after extended star watching, the Dogon astronomers would develop very sensitive dark-adapted eyes (“New Light on the Dogon and Sirius,” 48-49). Besides European travelers, missionaries, and visits from outer-space aliens, it is very possible for the Dogon astronomers to have gathered the knowledge they knew about the Sirius star system and the universe in general.

Architectural Engineering in Tawi

Of all the civilizations of the ancient world, few marvel the observer more than the architecture of Tawi. For those who have traveled to Egypt or who have seen photos, they are often amazed at how an ancient people without modern technological equipment could move five, ten, hundred ton stones, or more.
The column and the colonnade is an Afrikan architectural innovation that has spread throughout the entire world. Columns can be found imbedded in the architecture of buildings, museums, religious institutions, and homes among many different cultures in almost every city on the planet. Although the column is very common in world architecture, so few people know that it is an Afrikan creation.
The colonnade temples of Tawi are one of the highly impressive sights in the Nile Valley. The temple was also the center of education due to the fact that in the Afrikan worldview, the sacred and the secular were one. The worldview was spiritual in orientation. Usually known as the Karnak temple, the Ipet Iset temple/university that is dedicated to Amen has 134 massive djed columns that are about 70 feet tall, weighing countless tons each. The colonnade is a virtual man-made forest. As large as the columns are, their ancient beauty is equally impressive. They are carved as lotus flowers in the various temples, often with the top blossoming out. This added to aesthetic, but also helped more securely hold the roof placed on top. The fact that flowers were used in the architecture speaks to the spiritual worldview of the people.
We must keep in mind that the Afrikans of the Nile Valley built on large scale. The columns, statues, and tekhens were massive. How were they moved? How did they erect the massive columns? One of the obelisks or tekhens built by Hatshepsut’s architects was nearly 100 feet tall with a weight of over 300 tons. Two towering pylons or walled gateways built of smaller brick were between two tekhens that greeted the Afrikans as they walked into this greatest of the Nile Valley centers of spirituality and education. The temple/university was very modern by our own standards. For thousands of years, the world marveled at the architecture of Ipet Isut. It stands today as a masterpiece of engineering and architectural science. An excellent resource of Kemetic (KMT/Tawi) temple architecture is Egyptian Temples by Margaret Murray.
The temple/university was built over the reigns of many different rulers, and was thus classic and up-to-date at once. To build such a grand temple as Ipet Isut, the state funded an organized and supervised team of workers. An experienced architect would supervise the workers. A group of skilled professionals cut, shaped, and placed the various rock structures in place. Scribes carved the feats of the Pharaoh on the walls and columns. The engineering, organization, and cooperation were no doubt a sight to see in itself.
Luxor or Southern Ipet, which has many of the same features as the Ipet Isut temple, is just as impressive. Some of the other major temples/universities include Dendera, Philae, Kom Ombos, Medinet Habu, and Edfu. They are all several thousands of years old, and they are a testament to the Afrikan standard of architectural science set when Greece didn’t have the slightest idea of how to build in stone, or even writing. Most if not all of these grand temples were sites of much earlier and smaller shrines and/or temples. Thus, they all have more ancient Afrikan foundations. Take for instance the Temple of Edfu, “the building being in good condition little or no excavation has been made there since it was cleared by Mariette in 1860: but there is a record that Imhotep, the great architect of the IIIrd dynasty, built a temple on the site on a plan ‘which fell from heaven’” (Murray, Egyptian Temples, 162). Furthermore, the architecture of later temples, built under periods of conquest and the downfall of Tawi, the inspiration was always from the older Afrikan temples.
Agreed by many, the greatest architectural achievements in the Nile Valley are the pyramids. Since much has been written about the architectural and scientific accomplishment of the Great Pyramids, only some cursory notes are needed here. The pyramids were not simply stacked or thrown up in place, as some suggest. The Giza plateau was the site chosen for specific geological reasons. The bedrock foundation had to support such a massive project. A ground layout and geometric measurement of the base square for building was done. It is likely that a plan was drawn up because such blueprint diagrams have been found for other construction projects. Such geometric measurements and the use of slopes and weights were used throughout the entire process. This was calculus at work. From start to finish, the builders studied the stars for the purpose of aligning the manmade mountains to certain phenomena in the sky. A building diagram was likely used, especially when the internal passages of Khufu’s pyramid are considered. Some stones were cut on site, most were transported via land and boat. The quarrying, measuring, and shaping of stones were very important, especially the outer casing. Ramps were built to raise the stones averaging 2.5 tons to heights of hundreds of feet in the air. Massive polished limestones with sacred texts written on them were placed on the outer core. Such a feat as displayed on the Giza plateau in the Great Pyramids required a sophisticated use and understanding of geometry, calculus, geology, architecture, astronomy, and engineering.
We must also keep in mind that the evolution of pyramid building was a process that took place over several centuries. The mud-brick mastaba tombs of the earliest Pharaohs became brick tombs by the Third Dynasty. The Pharaoh Djoser, with the experience of the architect Imhotep, built the 200 feet tall Step Pyramid in stone. Pharaoh Sneferu would encase the steps of his pyramid, and the architectural sophistication reached its zenith under Khufu’s pyramid. What happened to the polished limestone that had Mdw Ntr (sacred writings) on them? What happened to the capstone (the benben stone)?

Like his predecessors, Khufu used limestone from local outcrops for the bulk of his pyramid, while for casing he used fine limestone from Troyu and the Moqattam Hills east of Cairo. The capstone was probably gilded. But nearly all the fine stone was peeled off by the medieval Muslim rulers of Egypt to build bridges and houses in Cairo (L. Sprague de Camp, The Ancient Engineers, 34).

A wide variety of tools were used in the building of Kemet’s monuments that were built to defy the ages of time. Many of these tools have changed very little with time and cultures. Hammers, mallets, chisels, ropes, measuring ropes, levers, measuring rulers, right angles, knives, plumb levels, a device for screwing holes in stone, axes, adzes, saws, and other tools were used. With the abundance of stone and the flexibility of the carpenter’s and architect’s tool kit allowed the Afrikans to build to the heavens. This could only happen with the experience and sound knowledge of architectural science.

Chemistry

From The Star of Deep Beginnings by Charles Finch, we have an enlightening chapter on metallurgy entitled “The Followers of Horus: 40,000 Years of African Mining and Metal Technology.” In Great African Thinkers edited by Ivan Van Sertima, the great Cheikh Anta Diop has two essays significant to the topic of Afrikan science entitled “Iron in the Ancient Egyptian Empire” and “Africa’s Contribution to World Civilization: The Exact Sciences.” The latter essay by Diop is an abbreviation of his more extensive treatment in Civilization or Barbarism in the chapter entitled “Africa’s Contribution to Humanity in Sciences and in Philosophy.” Finally, through Blacks in Science edited by Van Sertima, we can gain some insight into iron making outside of the Nile Valley. We will note that the evidence suggest that iron and metallurgy in general was introduced into Tawi by way of the lands to the south deeper in the continent. Tawi was peopled from the south, and the Afrikan migrants brought civilization and metal making with them into the area.
Charles Finch notes in The Star of Deep Beginnings that Afrikans were mining, smelting metal, and making tools continually from a very remote period. A manganese mine, along with tools from Zambia, date to 28,000 years ago. Iron mining was occurring in Swaziland 40,000 years ago. Finch states, “It seems evident that the entire region – encompassing Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland – had been the site of extensive mining operations repeatedly since the Upper Paleolithic” (26). It is generally assumed that the iron mines from this very remote period were used to get hematite for body decorations. The reason is that anything else would completely destroy the accepted Iron Age chronology. Finch states that although iron oxidizes (rusts) rapidly, that would eliminate much of the evidence if any were present from such a remote period. Nonetheless, we await further evidence. Yet, there is still enough evidence to support the Afrikan origin of iron making.
Before noting 2,900 to 5,500 year old evidence of iron slag and charcoal, evidence of smelting among the ancient Nok of the area of present day Nigeria, Finch points out that Afrikans of the Nile Valley were manipulating meteoric iron for practical usage 6,000 and 12,000 years ago (35). This was the introduction to the metal that familiarized the smelters with the chemistry and how to eventually derive it from Earthly or stratum sources. Then Finch notes that an iron tool was discovered in the Great Pyramid of Kufu. Diop makes the same observation in “Iron in the Ancient Egyptian Empire” (65). This is evidence that the Iron Age is at least 1,200 years before the believed Hittite beginning of the Iron Age of 1,500 BCE, according to Diop and Finch. Also, Finch stresses that all the latest evidence, hard scientific evidence, on Tawi chronology forces us to reevaluate everything; the Great Pyramid was built around 3,000 BCE, several centuries earlier than what was thought. That would mean that the Iron Age is at least 5,000 years old, and it began in the continent that gave civilization to the world, Afrika.
Mining and the separation of various metals from their ores to be fashioned into tools, weapons, jewelry, ceremonial items, and household decorations were very common in Kemet (KMT, Tawi). The single most famous sculpture is that of the solid gold mask with semi-precious stones and glass found in Tutankhamen’s coffin, three coffins of gold. How differently would the world view Kemet had the burial chambers of great Pharaohs and Queen Mothers not been looted over the ages? Still, Tutankhamen’s gold treasures give us a blink into the refined jewelry crafts of the ancient empire. Gold was the metal of choice. Royal regalia, thrones, statues of animals, statues of the boy King, jewelry, were all solid gold or gold covered.
As was stated, metal was fashioned for a variety of reasons. Whether it is a silver statue, gold earrings or a pendent inlaid with lapis lazuli, an iron hoe or steel knife, a bronze adze, a cooper tool, an electrum piece of art, or a bronze tool, the Afrikans of the Nile Valley were masters of metal shaping. Sculpting with glass was also practiced.
The use of various colors of paint, dyes, and cosmetics reached an impressive stage. Wigs were dyed, eye paint was made from black galena and green malachite as a cosmetic and sun-protector, oils were massaged over the body, fine linens were fashionable, foundation and lipstick were made from ochre. Lastly, and to top it all off, the Afrikans of the Nile Valley used polished and buffed bronze or copper mirrors.
When considering the chemistry of Kemet (Tawi), note must be made of the brilliant colors that the Afrikans of this land were able to make for painting not only small pieces of artwork but columns and temple walls. Faience ceramic had a bright blue color. Shaw and Nicholson in, The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, informs us about the beautiful faience.

Ceramic material composed of crushed quartz, quartz sand, with small amounts of lime and plant ash or natron. This body material is usually coated with a bright blue or green glaze of soda-lime-silica type…
The material was known to the Egyptians as tjehenet, the literal meaning of which was ‘brilliant’ or ‘dazzling’. Like glass, which was introduced in the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), its main purpose was probably to imitate gem-stones such as TURQUOISE and LAPIS LAZULI (95).
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In Ancient Egypt, David Silverman states, “Paint was made by mixing water and gum arabic with ground pigment. Black, blue, green, yellow, red and white were the most common colors” (221). To say “ground pigment” is an injustice of oversimplification. Afterall, “ground pigment” can very well be mud and rain water, but it was not. In a brief but informative essay by Hamed Ead entitled “Ancient Egyptian Science,” we quote the following concerning this “ground pigment”:

Thus, the pigments from the tomb of Perneb (at estimated 2650 B.C.) which was presented to Metropolitan Museum of New York City in 1913, were examined by Maximilian Toch. He found that the red pigment proved to be iron oxide, haematite; a yellow consisted of clay containing iron or yellow ochre; a blue color was a finely powdered glass; and a pale blue was a copper carbonate, probably azurite; green were malachite; black was charcoal or boneblack; gray, a limestone mixed with charcoal; and a quantity of pigment remaining in a paint pot used in the decoration, contained a mixture of haematite with limestone and clay.

The use of extracting minerals, not only for sculpture and tools, but also for paint displays the civilizations advanced stage in the chemical process. Thus, what we call the “Periodic Table of the Elements” was not discovered yesterday. Many of the elements were in practical and ceremonial use in Afrika for thousands of years. We cannot say that the Periodic Table is an Afrikan invention, but we must point out the historical fact that Afrikans were the first to use many of the elements on the Table such as copper, iron, gold, silver, silicon, and possibly others. Other ancient cultures used the elements on the Periodic Table. It is due to a lack of accuracy and far too many distorions with such important details that our children are not educated properly.

Mummification

Professional, priestly embalmers conducted the task of mummification. The mummification process in Tawi was central to honoring the deceased in their passage to the ancestral world. It also lent strongly to the idea of a resurrection. The heart was left in the body because of the spiritual significance attached to this organ. The brain was taken out through the nostril with a metal hook made especially for this purpose. The liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were surgically removed and stored in canopic jars that represented the Four Sons of Heru or the four corners of heaven. After removal of the organs, the body was stitched. The body was repeatedly washed with palm wine in this process. Frankincense, myrrh, cedar oil, and resin were used in the process. The key chemical compound was natron, and along with the climate of the Nile, this assisted in the preservation of the body for ages. The body was allowed to lay in natron for 70 days, the longest stage in the process. The last stage was the very careful wrapping of the body with fine linen before the burial process. A good source on mummification is Egyptian Mummies: Unraveling the Secrets of an Ancient Art by Bob Brier. There are any number of books with information on the science of mummification.

Modern Afrikan Contributions to Science

For thousands of years, Afrikans played a central role in the historical development of science. To write a science book or to teach a science course and totally ignore the Afrikan foundation of modern science is to promote the mis-education of children or students, and that is all too common in the present educational system. As terrible as it is to ignore the ancient Afrikan foundation of science, it is equally shameful to ignore the modern contributions to science by Afrikan people, and this mistreatment of instruction is equally pervasive in the educational settings. Let us briefly highlight the contributions that Afrikan people have made to modern science. From the industrial revolution to the medical field, from the computer age and communications to safety inventions, from engineering to agriculture, from chemistry to astronomy, from advances in military technology to NASA space exploration, people of Afrikan descent have made major contributions to modern science, and continue to do so today.
Black Genius by Dick Russell would be a good resource to begin with on the modern Afrikan contribution to science. The book is not an end-all, but there are several good essays on what Russell rightfully calls Black genius. In “Ancestors – The Astromer/Surveyor,” Russell states:

By the time he died in 1806, Benjamin Banneker was somewhat of a legendary figure along the East Coast of a recently independent United States – a self-taught mathematician, astronomer, inventor, surveyor and almanac writer who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson in an attempt to influence his views on slavery (345).

In “Ancestors – Lewis Latimer and the Early Black Inventors,” Russell makes note of an Afrikan American scholar from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, one Asa Davis whose specialty was in Afrikan-American science and invention. When asked about the first time he heard of Lewis Latimer, Asa Davis begins by recounting some other significant facts of modern Afrikan science. An Afrikan Ghanaian, Kwakwe wrote a book on the classification of plants that would influence modern biology. Davis stated that Edward Everett Just, a Black biologist:

…became the first scientist to unlock the secrets of cell function during the 1920s and 1930s. He discovered the essential part that the outer surface played in the development of the egg and the entire cell, shattering then-accepted thinking that only the nucleus was important (291).

Davis also mentions the Black astronomer from Russia, Bolotov. It was this astronomer, who through his observations “was among the first to point out that mass and time in space interlock, which ties into some things Einstein worked on for his theory of relativity.” Davis continued, “Today, what we know as Riemann geometry is really based on Bolotov’s observation” (291).
Like a good history teacher, before discussing Latimer, Davis notes the significance Norbert Rillieux, who completely changed the sugar processing industry; Elijah McCoy who invented the first self-lubricating system for trains; and Jan Matzeliger who revolutionized shoe production throughout America and the world. Finally, after these brief but very important facts, Asa Davis begins to discuss Lewis Latimer, the man who invented the carbon filament to make light bulbs burn, and who lit up the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London.
In Blacks in Science, John Henrik Clarke has an excellent essay entitled “Lewis Latimer - Bringer of the Light.” Latimer worked with the Thomas Edison Pioneers, invented his own electric lamp with Joseph Nicholas, invented a more efficient method for the production of carbon filaments, and made the drawing’s for the phone which Alexander Graham Bell received the patent. Also, Latimer authored the first book on this lighting system entitled “Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System.” Latimer was called on in Edison’s court cases as a specialist concerning the invention. Of the Edison Pioneers, Latimer was obviously the expert on his invention above the others, including Edison.
The inventions of Banneker, Latimer, McCoy, Rillieux, Matzeliger, and others are all the more significant when we consider that these scientists were descendent of enslaved Afrikans. One of the greatest of the scientists, of any race, in the early 20th century was born into slavery, left on the ground, and sold for a horse when he was a baby. That was the beginnings of George Washington Carver’s life. More than any single individual, he saved the agricultural economy of America, influenced scientific farming throughout the world, and began an alternative food industry. Some of Carver’s many inventions were types of beverages, over 30 types of milk, snacks and candy, various meat substitutes, medicines, cosmetics, fuel, and more. In George Washington Carver: His Life and Faith In His Own Words, biographer William Federer states of the centuries greatest agricultural scientist:

George [Washington Carver] showed the farmers the benefits of planting legumes, such as peanuts, which replenish the soil with nitrogen. The farmers heeded his advice but soon had more peanuts than the market wanted, as peanuts were primarily used as feed for animals.
He discovered over three hundred uses for the peanut, over one hundred eighteen for the sweet potato, over sixty for the pecan, as well as dozens more for the soybean, okra, cowpeas, wild plums, etc (15).

Where modern contributions to science are concerned, few sources are as helpful as Raymond Webster’s African American Firsts in Science and Technology. There are well over a thousand entries in this chronological book, covering such fields as astronauts, aviation, biology, chemistry, engineers, inventors, mathematicians, physicians, physicists, and many more. A good classroom teacher would know to preface this before certain classroom discussion, locating particular people of Afrikan descent who made scientific contributions depending on the lessons for the day. Also, Webster has a very excellent bibliography for the serious reader and researcher.
Russell Adam’s Great Negroes Past and Present is a good reference book for K-12 teachers and students. Overall, it can also be very useful for the undergraduate university levels. He has a section in the book entitled “Science and Industry” where there is some detail on the following: mechanical inventor Elijah McCoy, scientist Norbert Rillieux, mechanical inventor Jan Matzeliger, electrical engineer Granville T. Woods, stop light and gas mask inventor Garrett Morgan, ethnologist Martin Delany, explorer Matthew Henson, agricultural scientist George Washington Carver, first successful heart surgeon Daniel Hale Williams, cellular biologist Ernest Just, renowned surgeon Ulysses G. Dailey, surgeon and inventor of blood plasma preservation Charles Drew, chemist Percy Julian, and dermatologist Theodore Lawless.
A few notes should be made of some of the above mentioned individuals who have made contributions to science. Many of the doctors and inventors of Afrikan descent have changed the quality of life and extended the possibility of longevity. Consider how the traffic light and gas mask of Garrett Morgan have saved countless lives since their invention. Morgan had to hire a white man to sell his gas mask because of American racism.
Granville T. Woods had dozens of inventions, and he invented an effective telegraphing system for railways that significantly reduced the number of crashes in the outdated system. Woods invented what we call the “Third Rail” today. He invented the overhead conducting system for trains and trolleys. After Edison lost two court cases to Woods over his electric motor regulator, Edison tried to hire Woods and was turned down (Black Genius, 300-301 and African American First, 4-5). In short, Woods helped modernize the railroad industry.
Percy Julian’s extraction of sterols from soybeans made cortisone available to the common masses of people. Before this, only the rich bothered to treat arthritis. He developed a method to mass produce the drug physostigmine for the treatment of glaucoma. He also invented a foam to extinguish fires (Great Negroes, 74 and African American First, 293). These were his primary contributions, and when Dr. Julian moved to Oak Park, Illinois, his home was firebombed. Percy Julian’s grandfather was a former enslaved Afrikan with fingers missing as a punishment for learning reading and writing.
Lewis Latimer, one of the most outstanding inventors of his time, was born to George Latimer and Rebecca Smith, who both had to escape the evil and inhumane system of slavery to gain their freedom. After escaping from Norfolk, Virginia to Boston, Massachusetts, the highly publicized case about George Latimer’s freedom began. With the support of Frederick Douglass and others, the case was won. Yet, with the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and the 1857 Dred Scott case, the Latimer family lived in constant fear and had to move frequently. George and Rebecca lived in constant worry about their freedom and safety in a land where slavery was constitutional. Winifred Latimer Norman, granddaughter of Lewis Latimer, authored the very important book Lewis Latimer: Scientist.
Marie Brittan Brown invented the home security system. Philip Emeagwali, a Nigerian, is one of the “fathers” of the supercomputer and the internet. Emeagwali had to face the exploitation and forces of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Nigeria. Dr. Jane Cooke Wright and her father Dr. Louis Tompkins Wright have been pioneers in the treatment of cancer with chemotherapy drugs. Dr. Ben Carson has trained hundreds of doctors around the world in complex operations of brain surgery. Dr. Patricia Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe for eye surgery to remove cataracts, and she relates how she dealt with racism and sexism. There are literally thousands of inventions, improvements, and contributions of science by people of Afrikan descent. In no way is this essay a complete account as that would take at least several volumes. What is attempted here is to broaden the appreciation for Afrikan science, and to give a method of approach to the student and teacher. The Black Invention Museum, with world traveling exhibits, located in Los Angeles, California furnishes the patent dates for countless inventions. The Museum is highly recommended, and it provides an historical background on Afrikan science from antiquity to the present. This subject is one that must be treated systematically in the classroom setting. This essay attempts to give some direction. There continues to be a growing body of text on this subject. The reader, teacher, parent, student must become more informed. In addition to all other works cited in this essay, I do suggest the two following works: Vivian Sammon’s Blacks in Science and Medicine, and Spangenburg’s and Moser’s African Americans in Science, Math and Inventions.

Conclusion

Math and science are the two subjects with the greatest emphasis in the school systems. In addition, these are the subjects that our children have the greatest problems in because these subjects are taught so backwards with no cultural relevance. Most individuals fail to even recognize how math and science are culturally and historically bound in the points of views that people teach and learn from. As a result, we have a very European point of view of math and science. Is it no wonder why our children are being outperformed in a school system that does not teach to their particular needs and interests?
Essential to the problem is that school systems are too ignorant to understand the identity of Afrikan children with an American geographic location. The bare concepts of education aside, we should know that Afrikan children in America have specific cultural needs that are not catered to by the mainstream. Our responsibility then is to cater to the culturally and socially relevant curriculum and instruction of our children ourselves. It is insanity to do otherwise.
We must understand why education is important, critical. The purpose of education must go beyond getting a job, house, and car. Education must have cultural and social relevancy to any people. If our children are receiving an education, we must ask ourselves how is that the education will uplift and build our people, and our communities. In the subconscious or the conscious of all people is this primary question about the purpose of education – the building of people and nations. We who are of Afrikan descent around the world must not let it escape us.
No nation or group of people can build without a sound class of scientific experts to rely on. Currently, the nations of Afrika, the Afrikan American population, and many other majority Afrikan nations, have a brain drain. That is, our experts and doctors of science have little nation and race consciousness. The crisis with the Afrikan world is not that we lack medical and scientific experts, although we can use many, many more. Our crisis is one of loyalty. Our scientists are no different from the average person in our communities that lacks any racial or cultural loyalty. This crisis goes back to the self-negating type of education, socialization, and values we are taught. The type of education and values our children receive depends on who controls their school systems, media, and information outlets. The only way Afrikan (Black) children will receive an education for the liberation and the maintenance of their people is if we build that type of education and socialization systems for them. Since when did a system built on oppression properly educate the oppressed? Education teaches one to run a nation, build and maintain an economy, utilize natural and manufactured resources, install global communication systems, develop the necessary administrative levels for management, direct political influences, create defense forces, etc. Why would a country built on oppression from its very foundation properly educate an oppressed class? With all the money we frivolously waste, we could change history. When we build our own independent school systems in America and around the world, schools based on our worldview and spirituality, then and only then will our children receive a proper education. Otherwise we’re playing in someone else’s game, by their rules. We need to create our own systems, with our own rules and objectives.