Why Africana History?

>
> by Dr. John Henrik Clarke
>
> 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 abut 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. 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 born in 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. DuBois 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. Egypt gave birth to what later would become
> known as "Western Civilization," long before the greatness of Greece
> and Rome.
>
> 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. 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. 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 in the 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.
>
> The late Dr. John Henrik Clarke, a pre-eminent African-American
> historian, author of several volumes on the history of Africa and the
> Diaspora, taught inthe Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at
> Hunter College of the City University of New York.
>
> Originally published in THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine (1997).
>