Review of African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge - Chapter 11
Chapter 11 of ASCAC's African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge is Dr.Greg Kimathi Carr's essay entitled "The African-Centered Philosophy of History: An Exploratory Essay on the Genealogy of Foundationist Historical Thought and African Nationalist Identity Construction." As the title so thoroughly states, this essay presents a concise overview of the motivating principles and historical groundwork that inform our current efforts to rescue and restore African history and culture. It offers greatly appreciated clarity to those of us laymen who are doing our best to do the work of ASCAC.
Carr discusses motivating principles in terms of a pursuit of African identity. Identity arises from the human ability to base present actions on memories of the past and visions of the future. For African people especially, a living link connects us to our ancestors and descendents. "From cultural constructs, the product of ordered traces of human experience, come the collective senses of identity from which individuals draw their sense of identity." Visionary thinkers of the nineteenth century started to formally articulate the following concepts on identity. (1) The purpose of an identity is to spur thinking and behavior that uplifts, is geared towards survival, and fosters growth. For African visionaries this highlighted the need to develop thinking and behaviors that would lead to psychological and economic liberation. (2) The African identity imposed by the West - one of a deviation from their European norm - did not serve us. (3) Memories of our true African identity existed in historical records. (4) The pursuit of our true history fosters both material and spiritual growth.
The following are glimpses of Carr's review of nineteenth and twentieth century activities of the visionaries on whose shoulders we stand.
Mid to Late 19th Century: "Earlier uses of African history to undergird a philosophy of historical progress, couched in sentiments of what has come to be known as 'Ethiopianism', stresses that African people and presided over highly advanced classical societies, only to fall to degradation, ready to assume an ascendant role once more." Among the works reflecting the Ethiopian sentiment were Light and Truth (Robert Benjamin Lewis, 1844), A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government (James Theodore Holly, 1857), The Rising Son (William Wells Brown, 1874), The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (Brown, 1865), Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color (Martin R. Delany, 1879), The Negro in Ancient History (Edward Wilmot Blyden, 1859), Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (Blyden, 1887), and The Cushite, or the Descendants of Ham (Rufus L. Perry, 1893).
Late 19th Century: The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review becomes a forum for African history reconstruction from an African-centered perspective. "Some of the more provocative historical pieces in the Review include George Wilson Brent's 'Origin of the White Race,' in which he delves into the myth of the 'curse of Ham' and places the onus of racial aggression squarely on the shoulders of Europeans; J.A.M. John's 'The Proverbial Philosophy of the Colored Race,' which seeks to show some of the pre-Maafa origins of African deep thought; and J.C. Embry's 'Barbarism in Our Civilization,' in which he asserts the 'Egypt produced a governmental and social system a civilization that was African.'"
Early 20th Century: Professionally trained W.E.B. DuBois, Carter Goodwin Woodson and William Leo Hansberry exert their influences. "DuBois's impact on future generations of African thinkers rests largely in both his politicization of the use of African history as the key element in the construction of a global sense of African identity and in his attempt to marshal empirical research techniques to advance his political thesis."
Early 20th Century: "Historians without portfolio" begin to institutionalize the lay person's study of African-centered history. "Among the most significant of these 'historians without portfolio' were Arthur A. Schomburg, John E. Bruce, William H. Ferris and Hubert Henry Harrison."
1930's: New York City becomes "the incubator for the intergenerational dialogue between these lay scholars and their immediate apprentices." The Harlem History Club - later renamed the Blyden Society - is led by Willis N. Huggins and John Glover Jackson. Jackson mentors John Henrik Clarke. "Another group, the St. Mark's Lyceum study group, included Harrison, J.E. Bruce and Schomburg."
Mid to Late 20th Century: "John H. Clarke, John Jackson, Chancellor Williams and Yosef ben-Jochannan comprise the four most significant American-born figures produced during the early to middle part of the twentieth century in the African-centered genealogy of historical thinkers." "Clarke is fond of recalling that, while Hansberry taught him 'the philosophical meaning of history' and Schomburg taught him 'the comparative study of history', it was Huggins who taught him 'the political meaning of history.'" "Ben-Jochannan, Clarke, Williams and Jackson formed a quartet of 'esteemed elders,'who traveled across the United States during the 1970s and 1980s popularizing the philosophy of history."
1950's: Cheikh Anta Diop - "historian, Egyptologist, linguist, anthropologist, chemist, physicist, and botanist" - "assumes the status of the foremost champion of the rescue and reconstruction of African history in service of the African and human future. Diop saw history as a grand cycle much as his lay counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic had. He possessed the training, however, to undergird his political sensibilities."
1954: Publication of three powerfully influential books: Diop's Negro Nations and Culture, from Negro Egyptian Antiquity to Culture Problems of Negro Africa Today; J.C. deGraft Johnson's African Glory; and George G.N. James's Stolen Legacy.
1974: Publication of William's The Destruction of Black Civilization.
1974: Diop and his protege, Theophile Obenga, highlight the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of the Meroitic Script. They stagger European Egyptologists with overwhelming evidence that the ancient Egyptians (Kemites) were Black Africans.
September 1985: Asa Hilliard III, Larry Obadele Williams, Charles S.Finch III and Ivan Van Sertima host Diop at the "Nile Valley Conference" in Atlanta, Georgia.
February 1984: The Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) is founded by John H. Clarke, Yosef ben-Jochannan, Jacob Carruthers, Leonard Jeffries, Asa Hilliard and Maulana Karenga.
Among Carr's closing thoughts is the following. "James A. Noel has written that, 'for African-Americans, history is cathartic and serves not only to describe facts but also to penetrate the data of experience with the understanding that can guide a praxis aimed at social transformation.' For Noel, the spiritual unity that undergirds African historical production is the belief in an eventual triumph, the optimism imbricated in African spiritual traditions across the globe."