by John Henrik Clarke The African, Clitus Niger, King of Bactria, was also a
cavalry commander for Alexander the Great. Most of the
Greeks' thinking was influenced by this contact with the
Africans. The people and the cultures of what is known as
Africa are older than the word "Africa." According to most
records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the
face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only
influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the
early world before there was a place called Europe. When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the
crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the
Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before
Europe was born. In this period of history, what was to be
later known as "Africa" was an unknown place to the people
who would someday be called, "Europeans." Only the people of
some of the Mediterranean Islands and a few states of what
would become the Greek and Roman areas knew of parts of
North Africa, and that was a land of mystery. After the rise and decline of Greek civilization and the
Roman destruction of the city of Carthage, they made the
conquered territories into a province which they called
Africa, a word derived from "afri" and the name of a group
of people about whom little is known. At first the word
applied only to the Roman colonies in North Africa. There
was a time when all dark-skinned people were called
Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, "The Land
Of The Burnt-Face People." If Africa, in general, is a man-made mystery, Egypt, in
particular, is a bigger one. There has long been an attempt
on the part of some European "scholars" to deny that Egypt
was a part of Africa. To do this they had to ignore the
great masterpieces on Egyptian history written by European
writers such as, Ancient Egypt. Light of the World, Vols. I
& II, and a whole school of European thought that placed
Egypt in proper focus in relationship to the rest of
Africa. The distorters of African history also had to ignore the
fact that the people of the ancient land which would later
be called Egypt, never called their country by that name. It
was called, Ta-Merry or Kampt and sometimes Kemet or Sais.
The ancient Hebrews called it Mizrain. Later the Moslem
Arabs used the same term but later discarded it. Both the
Greeks and the Romans referred to the country as the "Pearl
Of The Nile." The Greeks gave it the simple name, Aegyptcus.
Thus the word we know as Egypt is of Greek Origin. Until recent times most Western scholars have been
reluctant to call attention to the fact that the Nile River
is 4,000 miles long. It starts in the south, in the heart of
Africa, and flows to the north. It was the world's first
cultural highway. Thus Egypt was a composite of many African
cultures. In his article, "The Lost Pharaohs of Nubia,"
Professor Bruce Williams infers that the nations in the
South could be older than Egypt. This information is not new. When rebel European scholars
were saying this 100 years ago, and proving it, they were
not taken seriously. It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa
has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and
adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their
history written by local writers. It was not until near the
end of the 18th century when a few European scholars learned
to decipher their writing that this was understood. The Greek traveler, Herodotus, was in Africa about 450
B.C. His eyewitness account is still a revelation. He
witnessed African civilization in decline and partly in
ruins, after many invasions. However, he could still see the
indications of the greatness that it had been. In this
period in history, the Nile Valley civilization of Africa
had already brought forth two "Golden Ages" of achievement
and had left its mark for all the world to see. Slavery and colonialism strained, but did not completely
break, the cultural umbilical cord between the Africans in
Africa and those who, by forced migration, now live in what
is called the Western World. A small group of
African-American and Caribbean writers, teachers and
preachers, collectively developed the basis of what would be
an African Consciousness movement over 100 years ago. Their
concern was with African, in general, Egypt and Ethiopia,
and what we now call the Nile Valley. In approaching this subject, I have given preference to
writers of African descent who are generally neglected. I
maintain that the African is the final authority on Africa.
In this regard I have reconsidered the writings of W.E.B.
DuBois, George Washington Williams, Drusilla Dungee Houston,
Carter G. Woodson, Willis N. Huggins, and his most
outstanding living student, John G. Jackson. I have also
re-read the manuscripts of some of the unpublished books of
Charles C. Seifert, especially manuscripts of his last
completed book, Who Are The Ethiopians? Among Caribbean
scholars, like Charles C. Seifert, J.A. Rogers (from
Jamaica) is the best known and the most prolific. Over 50
years of his life was devoted to documenting the role of
African personalities in world history. His two-volume work,
World's Great Men of Color, is a pioneer work in the
field. Among the present-day scholars writing about African
history, culture and politics, Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan's
books are the most challenging. I have drawn heavily on his
research in the preparation of this article. He belongs to
the main cultural branch of the African world, having been
bornin Ethiopia, growing to early manhood in the Caribbean
Islands and having lived in the African-American community
of the United States for over 20 years. His major books on
African history are: Black Man of the Nile, 1979, Africa:
Mother of Western Civilization, 1976, and The African
Origins of Major Western Religions, 1970. Our own great historian, W.E.B. Du Bois tells us, "Always
Africa is giving us something new . . . On its black bosom
arose one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of
self-protecting civilizations, and grew so mightily that it
still furnishes superlatives to thinking and speaking men.
Out of its darker and more remote forest vastness came, if
we may credit many recent scientists, the first welding of
iron, and we know that agriculture and trade flourished
there when Europe was a wilderness." Dr. DuBois tells us further that, "Nearly every human
empire that has arisen in the world, material and spiritual,
has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of
Africa. It was through Africa that Christianity became the
religion of the world . . . It was through Africa that Islam
came to play its great role of conqueror and civilizer." Egypt and the nations of the Nile Valley were,
figuratively, the beating heart of Africa and the incubator
for its greatness for more than a thousand years. This is a part of the African story, and in the distance
it is a part of the African-American story. It is difficult
for depressed African-Americans to know that they are a part
of the larger story of the history of the world. The history
of the modern world was made, in the main, by what was taken
from African people. Europeans emerged from what they call
their "Middle-Ages," people-poor, land-poor and
resources-poor. And to a great extent, culture-poor. They raided and
raped the cultures of the world, mostly Africa, and filled
their homes and museums with treasures, then they called the
people primitive. The Europeans did not understand the
cultures of non-Western people then; they do not understand
them now. History, I have often said, is a clock that people use to
tell their political time of day. It is also a compass that
people use to find themselves on the map of human geography.
History tells a people where they have been and what they
have been. It also tells a people where they are and what
they are. Most importantly, history tells a people where
they still must go and what they still must be. There is no way to go directly to the history of
African-Americans without taking a broader view of African
world history. In his book Tom-Tom, the writer John W.
Vandercook makes this meaningful statement: A race is like a
man. Until it uses its own talents, takes pride in its own
history, and loves its own memories, it can never fulfill
itself completely. This, in essence, is what
African-American history and what African-American History
Month is about. The phrase African-American or
African-American History Month, taken at face value and
without serious thought, appears to be incongruous. Why is
there a need for an African-American History Month when
there is no similar month for the other minority groups in
the United States. The history of the United States, in
total, consists of the collective histories of minority
groups. What we call 'American civilization' is no more than the
sum of their contributions. The African-Americans are the
least integrated and the most neglected of these groups in
the historical interpretation of the American experience.
This neglect has made African-American History Month a
necessity. Most of the large ethnic groups in the United
States have had, and still have, their historical
associations. Some of these associations predate the
founding of the Association For The Study of Negro Life and
History, (1915). Dr. Charles H. Wesley tells us that,
"Historical societies were organized in the United States
with the special purpose in view of preserving and
maintaining the heritage of the American nation." Within the framework of these historical societies, many
ethnic groups, Black as well as White, engaged in those
endeavors that would keep alive their beliefs in themselves
and their past as a part of their hopes for the future. For
African-Americans, Carter G. Woodson led the way and used
what was then called, Negro History Week, to call attention
to his people's contribution to every aspect of world
history. Dr. Woodson, then Director of the Association For
the Study of Negro Life and History,conceived this special
week as a time when public attention should be focused on
the achievements of America's citizens of African
descent. The acceptance of the facts of African-American history
and the African-American historian as a legitimate part of
the academic community did not come easily. Slavery ended
and left its false images of Black people intact. In his
article, "What the Historian Owes the Negro," the noted
African-American historian, Dr. Benjamin Quarles, says:
The Founding Fathers, revered by historians for over a
century and a half, did not conceive of the Negro as part of
the body of politics. Theoretically, these men found it hard
to imagine a society where Negroes were of equal status to
whites. Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United
States, who was far more liberal than the run of his
contemporaries, was never the less certain that "the two
races, equally free, cannot live in the same government."
I have been referring to the African origin of
African-American literature and history. This preface is
essential to every meaningful discussion of the role of the
African-American in every aspect of American life, past and
present. I want to make it clear that the Black race did not
come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role
and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a
people to use their own talents, take pride in their own
history and love their own memories. In order to fulfill
themselves completely, in all of their honorable endeavors
it is important that the teacher of history of the Black
race find a definition of the subject, and a frame of
reference that can be understood by students who have no
prior knowledge of the subject. The following definition is
paraphrased from a speech entitled,"The Negro Writer and His
Relation To His Roots," by Saunders Redding, (1960):
Heritage, in essence, is how a people have used their talent
to created a history that gives them memories that they can
respect, and use to command the respect of other people. Most importantly, an understanding of history tells a
people where they still must go, and what they still must
be. Early white American historians did not accord African
people anywhere a respectful place in their commentaries on
the history of man. In the closing years of the nineteenth
century, African-American historians began to look at their
people's history from their vantage point and their point of
view. Dr. Benjamin Quarks observed that "as early as 1883
this desire to bring to public attention the untapped
material on the Negro prompted George Washington Williams to
publish his two-volume History of The Negro Race in America
from 1619 to 1880. The first formally trained
African-American historian was W.E.B. DuBois, whose doctoral
dissertation, published in 1895, The Suppression Of The
African Slave Trade To The United States, 1638-1870, became
the first title to be published in the Harvard Historical
Studies. It was with Carter G. Woodson, another Ph.D., that
African world history took a great leap forward and found a
defender who could document his claims. Woodson was
convinced that unless something was done to rescue the Black
man from history's oversight, he would become a "negligible
factor in the thought of the world. " Woodson, in 1915,
founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History. Woodson believed that there was no such thing as,
"Negro History." He said what was called "Negro History" was
only a missing segment of world history. He devoted the
greater portion of his life to restoring this segment. Africa came into the Mediterranean world, mainly through
Greece, which had been under African influence, and then
Africa was cut off from the melting pot by the turmoil among
the Europeans and the religious conquests incident to the
rise of Islam. Africa, prior to these events, had developed
its history and civilization, indigenous to its people and
lands. Africa came back into the general picture of history
through the penetration of North Africa, West Africa and the
Sudan by the Arabs. European and American slave traders next
ravaged the continent. The imperialist colonizers and
missionaries finally entered the scene and prevailed until
the recent re-emergence of independent African nations. Africans are, of course, closely connected to the history
of both North and South America. The African-American's role
in the social, economic and political development of the
American states is an important foundation upon which to
build racial understanding, especially in areas in which
false generalization and stereotypes have been developed to
separate peoples rather than to unite them. Contrary to a
misconception which still prevails, the Africans were
familiar with literature and art for many years before their
contact with the Western World. Before the breaking-up of
the social structure of the West African states of Ghana,
Mali and Songhay and the internal strife and chaos that made
the slave trade possible, the forefathers of the Africans
who eventually became slaves in the United States, lived in
a society where university life was fairly common and
scholars were held in reverence. To understand fully any aspect of African-American life,
one must realize that the African-American is not without a
cultural past, though he was many generations removed from
it before his achievements in American literature and art
commanded any appreciable attention. Africana, or Black
History, should be taught every day, not only in the
schools, but also inthe home. African History Month should
be every month. We need to learn about all the African
people of the world, including those who live in Asia and
the islands of the Pacific. In the twenty-first century there will be over one
billion African people in the world. We are tomorrow's
people. But, of course, we were yesterday's people, too.
With an understanding of our new importance we can change
the world, if first we change ourselves.
USAfricaonline
VIEWPOINT
Why Africana History?
Africa
and its people are the most written about and the least
understood of all of the world's people. This condition
started in the 15th and the 16th centuries with the
beginning of the slave trade system. The Europeans not only
colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize
information about the world and its people. In order to do
this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had
previously known about the Africans. They were not meeting
them for the first time; there had been another meeting
during Greek and Roman times. At that time they complemented
each other.
Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as
"Western Civilization," long before the greatness of Greece
and Rome.
The ultimate purpose of history and history teaching is to
use a people's talent to develop an awareness and a pride in
themselves so that they can create better instruments for
living together with other people. This sense of identity is
the stimulation for all of a people's honest and creative
efforts. A people's relationship to their heritage is the
same as the relationship of a child to its mother. I repeat:
History is a clock that people use to tell their time of
day. It is a compass that they use to find themselves on the
map of human geography. It also tells them where they are,
and what they are.
Dr. John Henrik Clarke, a pre-eminent African-American
historian, is author of several volumes on the history of
Africa and the Diaspora. He was head of the Department of
Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City
University of New York. He passed on July 16th, 1998