Black American history itself has a history. Because the history we read in books does not fall from the sky or get secreted by computers. It is something that is discovered, made and taught.
White Americans generally have little interest in black history:
- They see blacks and Africa as unimportant and therefore not worth knowing much about beyond a few self-serving stereotypes.
- They use history not to understand themselves and the world but to feel they are better than everyone else. A true black history threatens feel-good white history.
So blacks must uncover their own history.
It is harder than you think:
- Before 1865 few blacks could write – it was against the law to teach a slave to read and write – so precious little has been recorded about what they remembered of Africa and what they experienced in America.
- Before 1970 few could make a full-time living as black historians.
- From 1808 to 1950 blacks were almost completely cut off from Africa: in 1808 slaves stopped coming regularly from Africa and until at least 1950 the white rulers of Africa kept out most Black Americans as possible troublemakers.
The last one is huge: it meant blacks had to accept what whites told them about Africa, about where they came from: that it was a dark continent full of naked savages incapable of civilization. So apart from Egypt and Ethiopia they mostly avoided the subject of Africa altogether.
In the early 1800s black history was little more than the lives of notable blacks. It was not till the late 1800s and early 1900s that men like George Washington Williams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson and Arthur Schomburg began to study and write about black history in a more thoroughgoing way. Du Bois himself had a PhD in history from Harvard.
Schomburg gathered everything he could find about blacks and by blacks – the beginnings of what is now the Schomburg Center in Harlem. Because he was from Puerto Rico he saw Black American history as part of the larger history of the African Diaspora.
Both Schomburg and Woodson saw true black history as a way to free blacks from the racist lies of white people.
In the 1920s blacks began to take an interest in Africa, but it was not till the 1960s that they could freely go there themselves. They found out that West Africa, where most of them are from, was not full of naked savages like white people said. In fact before whites came and screwed up everything it had civilizations of its own, like the Mali and Songhay empires. It had great seats of learning, like Timbuktu, and cities larger than any in England of the time.
It was not till the 1970s, with black students pushing for universities to teach African American studies, that black history has had the money and manpower behind it to make solid, steady progress. For example, it was not till the 1990s that much was written about the slave trade – white historians had taken little interest in it.
See also:
- Mali Empire
- The Transatlantic slave trade
- Cheikh Anta Diop
- Black History Month – which grew out of Woodson’s Negro History Week
- race conscious
- internalized racism
- The white lens
This was a good post, it just proves the saying “you don’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you came from” so history is important and sweeping away the uglies and saying forget about it is really wrong.
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Whites see blacks and Africa as unimportant (unless they find ways to use them to their benefit), they warp history in their favor to make them feel and look superior, and at the same time some think we’re in a colorblind, post racial society.
I hate to type this but white people need serious help.
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The problem is that black people make integral part of America, and yet, whites (who often claim they’re patriots) are rarely interested in learning about Africa, history of black Americans, black movements etc. I don’t know if that’s because it’s not about them, or, on the contrary, because is IS about them (at least, partly), and they are the bad guys.
I am interested in African (American) studies, but unfortunately they’re not really available at my university. You can take the course, but it’s badly structured and the professor is not the best one. Too bad.
PS-I must act like Thad for a second and say this:
Because the history we read in books does not fall from the sky or get secreted by computers. It is something that is discovered, made and taught.
History is a construct, a narrative. It is not “the truth” in the simple meaning of the word. It is built, constructed and interpreted. You must always take into account that for every fact you learn, there are at least two facts that are hidden or changed in order to appeal.
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…it was not till the 1990s that much was written about the slave trade since white historians took little interest in it.
Mon cheri, I don’t think “interest” was what made them avoid the topic.
Great post, Abagond!!!
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Admittedly, I didn’t learn a lot about Black American history until I visited abagond’s blog and other blogs he mentioned. I am learning something new every time and it’s always a good thing.
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“until at least 1950 the white rulers of Africa kept out most Black Americans as possible troublemakers.”
Abagond–I didn’t know this.
From Mira: “History is a construct, a narrative. It is not “the truth” in the simple meaning of the word. It is built, constructed and interpreted. You must always take into account that for every fact you learn, there are at least two facts that are hidden or changed in order to appeal.”
It would be more accurate to call it “constructed history” or “only the stuff that makes us feel superior history.” The history of america is intentionally constructed to exclude the full histories of americans of color.
It must be repeated often that black americans came thru a couple of centuries of chattel slavery, another century of jim crow (domestic terrorism), and have accomplished a multitude in the less than 50 years since the Civil Rights Act became law. Native americans have a history that’s just as harsh. This was their land & they were willing to co-exist with people who’s character they knew nothing about. But they soon learned the content of european character. I keep this in mind when people (white, black & other) start talking inferior IQ, by the bootstraps, ghetto & any of the other keep-to-your-place propaganda frequently spewed.
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Great post Abagond. Did you catch wind of that Harvard student that wrote an editorial in the paper calling for Harvard to stop offering African American and other “ethnic” studies courses?
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~salient/site/2010/03/13/ethnic-studies/
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I guess I’m an anomaly for a white guy. I’ve been reading black history for a while now. Having said that, I just wanted to mention Dr. John Hope Franklin, Requiescat In Pace. I took a black history course some years back and our assigned book was, “From Slavery to Freedom”. Everyone, black and white, should read this. I also read Dr. Franklin’s autobiography, “Mirror to America”. I’m now reading “The New Negro” edited by Alain Locke, the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance”. I have learned that sometimes it’s better for me not to mention this kind of reading, because people try to impute some ulterior motive to it, i.e.”he must want to be black”. If I took “The New Negro” on the A train, people would assume that it was required for school. Almost no one would think it was because I find the Harlem Renaissance represents an impressive body of creative endeavor. We’ve come a long way in this country, but we’ve still got a long way to go.
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leigh204
Admittedly, I didn’t learn a lot about Black American history until I visited abagond’s blog and other blogs he mentioned. I am learning something new every time and it’s always a good thing.
——————————-
And of course Abagond’s blog is the “GO TO” place for all historical knowledge. Whats posted here is the absolute truth without question.
Signed,
A Abagond Blogger
Youtube U Graduate, Class of ’07
Majoring in African American Studies.
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Y Wrote
Great post Abagond. Did you catch wind of that Harvard student that wrote an editorial in the paper calling for Harvard to stop offering African American and other “ethnic” studies courses?
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~salient/site/2010/03/13/ethnic-studies/
=======================
Good link, that man really knows what he’s talking about.
If you have an Afrocentric Professor of Egyptology, you will be learning myth instead of fact.
So, basically you are paying for a class to learn distortions.
Not very smart.
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GWM said:
“And of course Abagond’s blog is the “GO TO” place for all historical knowledge. Whats posted here is the absolute truth without question.”
That is your own straw man argument. Leigh never said that nor did anyone else – this is just a blog, for goodness sake.
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Y said:
“Did you catch wind of that Harvard student that wrote an editorial in the paper calling for Harvard to stop offering African American and other “ethnic” studies courses?
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~salient/site/2010/03/13/ethnic-studies/
“
That is a pretty frightening article, showing that you can go to Harvard and still be every bit as much of an ignorant racist as rednecks are supposed to be. Which in fact makes the case that ethnic studies should be REQUIRED. Especially since Harvard produces a good number of the people run the country and shape its opinions.
Also pretty shocking to find out that Harvard, the top university in the country, has had no Egyptologist since 1940!
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JC said:
“I have learned that sometimes it’s better for me not to mention this kind of reading, because people try to impute some ulterior motive to it, i.e.”he must want to be black”.”
That is extremely sad – but not one bit surprising.
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@ Mira, Ankhesen, JC:
At one level whites do not see what black history has to do with them, so they are not interested – “It is just for blacks” – and yet deep down at another level they know full well what black history has to do with them and they do not want to face the ugly truth about themselves.
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@Great White Man:
leigh204
Admittedly, I didn’t learn a lot about Black American history until I visited abagond’s blog and other blogs he mentioned. I am learning something new every time and it’s always a good thing.
——————————-
abagond
That is your own straw man argument. Leigh never said that nor did anyone else – this is just a blog, for goodness sake.
lol. As abagond stated, I never said such a thing. Unlike you, I try not to be narrow-minded.
@Abagond:
I have never heard of Fannie Lou Hamer until I came to your blog. She was an amazing, courageous woman who did so much for civil rights. She’s an inspirational figure.
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Abagond this one is for you: http://www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=683:africa-in-the-light-of-civilization&catid=36:essays-a-discussions&Itemid=346
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They use history not to understand themselves and the world but to feel they are better than everyone else. A true black history threatens feel-good white history.
I think one of the things we have to keep in mind, is that our educational system was developed (the U.S. system) to assimilate the children of immigrants via a constant dose of U.S. propaganda (and it continues to play out like a really bad blockbuster). Thus historical figures are written about as if they were myths or legends and not complex human beings who often only had a few extraordinary deeds to their name. Consider that on the few times MLK is mentioned in so called “American” history texts, he is written as a two dimensional model minority iconic figure (no anti-war mention, no socialist leanings mentioned, etc.). On the flip side, certain atrocities, and threats to white supremacy are (again on the occasions they are mentioned) painted in the same mythic terms, but instead of being heroes they are boogie men (I mean a lot of white folks believe the BPP were terrorists), or epidemics (slavery, and the aboriginal atrocities are discussed almost as if the oppressed were just magically in those positions) divorced from the context which lead to their development.
Since the melting pot ideology was actually only supposed to apply to Europeans (if one reads the whole quote to which the theory is based) it kind of makes sense that nonwhite people (mostly men) are few, and their contributions are even more distorted. This nation state wasn’t developed with POC in mind.
I really dug that line I quoted. Great article. I am thinking of reblogging this. Would you be fine with that?
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I agree with so much of this post. Black history contains not only the truth about Black people in this country but about White people as well.
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There is one figure not referred to here, William Leo Hansberry
http://www.tadias.com/02/23/2009/black-history-month-leo-hansberry-founder-of-ethiopian-research-council/
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Abagond,
My co-workers in Mississippi tend to line Historical views of African-Americans with political party views.
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Abagond says:
That is a pretty frightening article, showing that you can go to Harvard and still be every bit as much of an ignorant racist as rednecks are supposed to be. Which in fact makes the case that ethnic studies should be REQUIRED. Especially since Harvard produces a good number of the people run the country and shape its opinions.
Yes… very sad to say the least. Not to long ago(maybe a month or so) a Harvard law student names Stephanie Grace wrote this email:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/30/042010_original_email_harvard_law/
SMDH.
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When I take African American Studies at school in the fall (unless I have to drop the class for whatever reason), I am expecting there to be no one but black people in there.
The thing is…these type of classes are needed more for white people than black people. But white people won’t take them and thus they stunt their growth and become even bigger racists.
Arizona already passed a law making these types of classes illegal…
Things truly are getting worse in this country. Its only a matter of time before white people start killing off blacks like they did with the Jews in Germany.
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The thing is…these type of classes are needed more for white people than black people. But white people won’t take them and thus they stunt their growth and become even bigger racists.
I agree. I have no idea what to do about it, I guess you can’t force anybody to take these courses… Or can you? Is there a way to make them (at least the basic course) compulsory?
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@alwaysright101
I don’t think I 100% agree with the notion that AA courses are more needed for white people than black people. I personally felt lost up until the age I was twenty-five. I had what I refer to as a sense of my reality, but I couldn’t articulate it in words, and thus I carried a lot of self-hate and unproductive anger (needed to specify a difference as anger brings development), but no clear understanding of what it all meant. It wasn’t until I started to dive into my history outside of even “ethnic” studies in college, that I understood what I was carrying, broke down my own miseducation and began to appreciate my history and myself.
“American” history does not give POC a sense of themselves, and when you can’t trace your history back to an exact location/peoples the way a number of blacks in the states can’t, then you have no choice, as Abagond mentions, but to accept what white people say about you, and knowing it is incorrect doesn’t help one build a solid identity unless you put something more solid in its place.
Certainly I believe that a comprehensive history needs to be told, and that this would greatly benefit whites, however I think that black people need this history either just as much or somewhat more than whites.
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90% of the students in my undergrad Black History courses were white.
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Ok, I get it. But I guess there’s no way, then, for whites to get interested, which is a shame.
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@Mira:
It IS a shame. SW6 is correct. What’s that saying again?
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”
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@ SW6, Mira, & Leigh204
I don’t think making these courses mandatory is the problem. After all the non-hyphenated history courses that only sprinkle brown faces into the mix are mandatory in grade school as well as in university, and while the under represented continue to fight this, very little has changed. The problem is that the racism, and xenophobia is so ingrained in U.S. society, that people can magically turn expanding the history curriculum to include “others” as unfair to white people, or even reverse racism. I would actually like to see what would happen if colleges required a semester of black history, as well as native, Chicana, and Asian American history courses, or an expansion of the two semester American History courses so that a more inclusive history can be taught. I think I would much rather push for the right thing than to not act due to possible backlash, when it has never even been tried yet.
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@SW6
There is a difference between hip pop (the ghetto fabulous, death , drug, and sex glorification shown on BET and MTV) and hip hop (which is not just discussing the issues black people face, and presenting solutions through music, but through activism and political involvement). Hip hop is a culture, hip pop is an industry.
I just had to clarify that.
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I’ve taken both a Black history class, and a Mexican-American history class, and both classes seemed to have a fairly diverse group of students. As both a college student and an autodidact, my approach is to get a comprehensive understanding of “traditional western” learning, to delve extensively into Black history, and also study the history of Latin America (I’m bilingual). I’ve spent a few years in the “pen” and have been around people who were adamant about not “reading that European stuff”. This is basically trading one set of blinders for another. I have an issue with people who present this an “either or” debate. A solid well rounded approach to learning, without taking away from either one, is the way to go. My personal library reflects this. By the way, as much as I like hip-hop; I have to agree with the comment above.
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And still on a similar theme:
A Brief History of Africentric Scholarship
http://www.melanet.com/clegg_series/scholarship.html
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[…] The history of black history […]
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[…] "White Americans generally have little interest in black history:They see blacks and Africa as unimportant and therefore not worth knowing much about beyond a few self-serving stereotypes.They use history not to understand themselves and the world butto feel they are better than everyone else. A true black history threatens feel-good white history.So blacks must uncover their own history.It is harder than you think:Before 1865few blacks could write – it was against the law to teach a slave to read and write – so precious little has been recorded about what they remembered of Africa and what they experienced in America.Before 1970few could make a full-time living as black historians.From 1808 to 1950 blacks were almost completely cut off from Africa: in 1808 slaves stopped coming regularly from Africa and until at least 1950 the white rulers of Africa kept out most Black Americans as possible troublemakers."- MORE – […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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[…] Black American history itself has a history. Because the history we read in books does not fall from the sky or get secreted by computers. It is something that is discovered, made and taught. White… […]
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This why I love this blog spot! Yep, Black history month is 365 days in our household. Wow written 2010. Thanks Abagond.
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[…] "White Americans generally have little interest in black history:They see blacks and Africa as unimportant and therefore not worth knowing much about beyond a few self-serving stereotypes.They use history not to understand themselves and the world butto feel they are better than everyone else. A true black history threatens feel-good white history.So blacks must uncover their own history.It is harder than you think:Before 1865few blacks could write – it was against the law to teach a slave to read and write – so precious little has been recorded about what they remembered of Africa and what they experienced in America.Before 1970few could make a full-time living as black historians.From 1808 to 1950 blacks were almost completely cut off from Africa: in 1808 slaves stopped coming regularly from Africa and until at least 1950 the white rulers of Africa kept out most Black Americans as possible troublemakers."- MORE – […]
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[…] "White Americans generally have little interest in black history:They see blacks and Africa as unimportant and therefore not worth knowing much about beyond a few self-serving stereotypes.They use history not to understand themselves and the world butto feel they are better than everyone else. A true black history threatens feel-good white history.So blacks must uncover their own history.It is harder than you think:Before 1865few blacks could write – it was against the law to teach a slave to read and write – so precious little has been recorded about what they remembered of Africa and what they experienced in America.Before 1970few could make a full-time living as black historians.From 1808 to 1950 blacks were almost completely cut off from Africa: in 1808 slaves stopped coming regularly from Africa and until at least 1950 the white rulers of Africa kept out most Black Americans as possible troublemakers."- MORE – […]
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“From 1808 to 1950 blacks were almost completely cut off from Africa: in 1808 slaves stopped coming regularly from Africa and until at least 1950 the white rulers of Africa kept out most Black Americans as possible troublemakers.”
@abagond
This is the only problematic part of this post. European colonialism, as in the Scramble for Africa, did not really begin until the late 19th century, and even in colonial territories, African-Americans were not necessarily cut off from 1808-1950.
1. Liberia and Sierra Leone had populations of African-American and Afro-Caribbean origins, like the famous Blyden, who studied Africa, wrote about Islam in Sierra Leone, etc. Americo-Liberians are an interesting group, and in some ways, comparable to the European colonists, but they and people of African-American/Caribbean origins in Sierra Leone wrote about West Africa. Of course, the writings of Blyden probably did not reach or affect the majority of African-Americans, but it certainly proves that writers from the African Diaspora in the US and Caribbean were intellectually curious about African history and wrote down their thoughts. Blyden had some surprisingly pro-Islam views…Firmin is another example from the Haitian context, although he’s not African-American. Black intellectuals from the 19th century US also identified Ancient Egypt’s African origins, too. If anyone knows where to get one’s hands on Blyden’s work, let me know…please.
2. Slaves were still smuggled into the US all the time after 1808. Thus, the constant flow of Africans into the US did not end, and presumably shaped the cultural traditions of African-Americans over the 19th century. New Orleans in the 19th century certainly received slaves from Africa and the Caribbean, who would’ve helped keep alive certain aspects of African cultures in Congo Square, for instance.
3. African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans went to South Africa in the late 19th century. Many were influential, or had least introduced ragtime, jazz, Garveyism, and brought back new things from the African continent. The average African-American may not have known much about Africa, but educated people in places like South Africa certainly knew about ‘American Negroes.’ Booker T. Washington was admired by the early ANC, for example. There were connections and exchange of ideas, like the growth of AME churches in southern Africa. Someone wrote an entire dissertation about the influence of ‘American Negroes’ who settled in Cape Town. Some of the ‘Coloureds’ of Cape Town are descendants of immigrants from the US or the Caribbean.
4. Jamaican-American Claude McKay spent time in Morocco during the French colonial rule. He even wrote about the gnawa music there, which tells us about black history in that part of North Africa. Hisham Aidi has written about that in his excellent ‘Rebel Music’ book.
5. Richard Wright went to Africa before decolonisation
6. Afro-Caribbeans of the French colonial possessions in the Caribbean went to numerous French colonies in Africa, and some wrote about Africa for the Francophone world, like Rene Maran’s famous novel, Batouala. Not African-American, but certainly part of a process of African-American and Afro-Caribbean people writing about black history.
I am not trying to minimize the fact that some colonial governments did try to limit African-Americans coming to Africa, but neither were African-Americans somehow never influential in Africa or traveling back and forth during that period.
Click to access 100249_Charles_MJ.pdf
http://www.howard.edu/library/reference/bob_edgar_site/maintext.html
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@Kiwi
Yes, thank you! Forgot about those two! Yes, African-American missionaries, church leaders, activists, journalists, and many, many others talked about Africa in the US or Europe.
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WEB DuBois also wrote a still useful history of Africa in 1915, 100 years ago. It was republished decades later as The World and Africa. It’s quite an impressive work, I read it a few years ago. DuBois is limited by the sources available then, and some of the racist concepts of the early 20th century, yet its still readable! You just have to remember that science at the time hadn’t proven the origins of the modern humans was in East Africa.
Nonetheless, DuBois’s work is impressive, and show show African-American intellectuals were researching the history of Africa and challenging the racist stereotypes.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/specials/dubois-world.html
http://sacred-texts.com/afr/dbn/index.htm
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Last comment, I promise. African-American David Walker and the Baron de Vastey (Haiti) also argued against white supremacist spins of African history. They didn’t write about it in much depth, but Walker compares Ancient Egypt to African-Americans in a very powerful way. Baron de Vastey, Firmin, and other Haitian intellectuals of the 19th century likewise challenged the assumption that all of African history is one of savagery or barbarism. The problem of climate, religion, and cultural biases seems to have driven many African-American and Haitian scholars to distinguish themselves from the Africa of the 19th century, however…
David Walker’s Appeal:
“For the information of such, I would only mention that the Egyptians, were Africans or coloured people, such as we are–some of them yellow and others dark–a mixture of Ethiopians and the natives of Egypt–about the same as you see the coloured people of the United States at the present day.–I say, I call your attention then, to the children of Jacob, while I point out particularly to you his son Joseph, among the rest, in Egypt”
I think we might ignore Walker’s intellectual legacy because we see him as an abolitionist and black nationalist. But what he’s saying here is quite radical, especially for the 1800s. It would seem as if African-Americans have been writing African History for almost 200 years!
Baron de Vastey’s essays (translated from French) can be found on Google Books, they are public domain. He exemplifies a sort of ambivalence among African Diasporic writers in the US and Caribbean who praised Egypt and Ethiopia, but were sometimes pro-European colonialism or perceived the Africa of their day as backwards.
Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Martin Delany and many other African-American writers of the 19th century made similar arguments about understanding the importance of ‘Negro’ origins of Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia, etc. Clarence E. Walker discusses it in his “We Can’t Go Home Again.”
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html
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