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Another Black History month has come
and gone with a pseudo-focused apology
on 400 years of slavery. But gracefully
continue ignoring things like decades
of Moorish democratic rule in Euro-Spain.
And how early African explorers had traveled
and settled in various parts of ancient Asia,
Europe and the Americas (i.e. Mexico!) long
before the coming of American slavery.
It remains ironic that as we have gone from
celebrating Negro History Week to presently
celebrating Black History Month—with focus
on slavery, abolition, emancipation, civil rights,
snail-paced growth in education, voting rights,
employment and election to high political
office—there is yet that sneaking implication that
leads us and our extended-family children thinking
that Black Lives here had their beginning with slavery.
While praises must forever be due to the tenacity
of those ancestors here who paved the way during
and after slavery, we must make it abundantly
clear to the present and future generations, that our
roots did not begin here in this stolen land that God
had already given to an anchored people of color.
While it is evident that the beginning of humankind
on this planet had its origin on the African continent,
the illusion is yet written and taught that human origin
and civilization was probably more of a Mesopotamian
European-like cocooning!
But let us not despair; the crushed and buried
truth by the dirt of his-story will not be denied
her assured resurrection. No, we must teach
our children that their treasured—mattering—
worldly origin and the growth of our great being
did not begin with American slavery; rather, the
Edenic Garden of God’s creation for all humanity
was—and remains—the blessed womb of Africa!
Indeed, there is much throughout the year that
we must tell our children of our glorious origin
and the conquering sojourning of our evolution
on Earth—created in God’s peace and love—
Now gone astray in the Clorox-like human-hate
phasing of a racist pigmentation ideology.
We must make our children aware of the great
ancient African civilizations and their Kingdoms
and Empires that existed long before the blank
caving of primitive others who stole our African
greatness and claimed it as Greco-Roman genius;
all of which today—though still veiled—remains
that well known crime of the white man’s burden.
We must make the children aware that it was in
the North, South, East and West of the African
continent where Black Africans became the first
of agricultural, hunter-gatherer humans to evolve
into settlers of extended family-like societies where
the earliest technology took root and led to African
ancestors being the forerunners of the growth and
development of early civilization.
For our children, we must dispel the evil untruths
of his/story, racist archeologists, racist cartoonist,
racist writers like Victor Hugo—who audaciously
insinuated Europe as “ultimate civilization” while
deeming Africa, “utter barbarism”—as well as
dispelling the racist poetic penning of Rudyard Kipling’s
poem which he mendacious titled, The White Man’s
Burden; insinuating it to be the white man’s supreme
moral duty to conquer and enslave the people of Africa.
We of the pen and voice must make our children
and theirs aware that their treasured ancestors
were not Illiterate savages living in straw and mud
huts with only Stone Age technology; rather, we must
make them aware that our ancient ancestors were
intelligent people of Africa who in ancient times
developed agricultural skills, technology to fashion iron
tools and weapons, minted coins and built great cities
and colossal monuments which still remain some of
great wonders of the world.
Indeed, we, today’s penning griots—repositories
of ourstory—must assure for coming generations
that the echoing sounds of Nok, Djenne, Bantu,
Aksum, Timbuktu, Kuba, Swahili, Kush, Ghana, Mali,
Songhai and Meroe, and indeed Egypt and Ethiopia,
become igniters of storytelling keloid memories of
Outstory’s cherished beginnings.
Indeed, fellow griots of today, we must assure
that coming generations of African Americans
will always be aware that their history—ourstory—
has its beginning with the glorious history of ancient
Africa, rather than with American slavery; and that
they must be well aware that their ancestors—aborted
from the womb of Mother Africa—were not randomly
chosen but were explicitly chosen from African regions
where Black Africans had attained great ingenuity in
agriculture, animal husbandry, masonry, metallurgy,
architecture and various other technical skills needed
in the building of new world exploited colonized nations.
Indeed, enslavement was a well investigated and
thought-out plan for the white man’s burden of
Europe and her bastard prodigal child, America
in their not going quietly into the night in their
establishing of colonialism and the so called
strange institution of slavery. And we’re well
aware of the past and post-neo-his/story and
the ramifications of the manifest destinies.
But the God of the oppressed has always
resurrected the living truth! So let us in our
own cultural revival, forever remember whose
and who we were before being aborted from
our homeland and packed down like sardines
in the belly bowels of Middle Passage ships.
Thus, in future celebrations of ourstory here,
let us begin at the beginning; review Middle
Passage slavery interruption; highlight how far
we have come and then turn our attentions
towards solving our own Black-on-Black crimes;
followed by calling Brothers and Sisters together
to get us back to being the great builders of
liberated self-sustaining faithful Black family
communities once again--becoming molders of
the new matter of black lives living lovingly in
the peace and love of our Savor!
P.S.: Remember, Ourstory begins with great
civilizations of Ancient African; not with
slavery in America! How can Blacks ever
begin a celebration with slavery?!?
