MARTIN ROBISON DELANY & EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN RACE MEN AND PIONEER BLACK NATIONALISTS

"Let me forever be discarded by the Black race, and let me be condemned by the White, if I strive not with all my powers, if I put not forth all my energies to bring respect and dignity to the African race." --Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden

Among the most acclaimed of the early pioneer advocates of the rights of African people were Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) and Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912). They were intellectuals and activists whose lives personified the maxim of Kwame Nkrumah--"Thought without practice is empty, action without thought is blind."

Dr. Martin Robison Delany has been called "the father of Black Nationalism." It was Delany, in fact, who coined the phrase "Africa for the Africans." Delany was born May 6, 1812 in West Virginia, of a free mother and a father who purchased his own freedom in 1823. Delany's paternal grandfather was an African chief; his maternal grandfather a Mandingo prince. Born in the South, Delany resorted to learning how to read and write illegally. Due to his continued desire to learn, he later settled in New York where he attended the African Free School. Between 1843 and 1846 Delany published his own newspaper--the Mystery. Subsequently, he worked with Frederick Douglass on his weekly newspaper--the North Star. In 1850, Delany entered Harvard Medical School as one of its first Black students. In 1859, he traveled to Africa, where he stayed for nearly a year, searching for a suitable location for emigration. On February 8, 1865, during the U.S. Civil War, Delany received the commission of Major in the Federal Army--the first Black man to receive such a commission.

Delany was an accomplished author. Not surprisingly, his favorite subject was histoy. One of his books, Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, With an Archaeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization, From Years of Careful Examination and Enquiry, was published in 1879, and detailed the African origins of Nile Valley civilizations.

The racial and historical consciousness of Martin Robison Delany is apparent in the names he gave his children. One of his son's name was Ramses Placido, named after the mighty Egyptian pharaoh Usemare Ramses II and the Cuban poet and revolutionary. Other names for his children included Alexander Dumas, Saint Cyprian and Toussaint l'Ouverture. Frederick Douglass said of Delany, "I thank God for making me a man, simply, but Delany always thanks Him for making him a Black man."

Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden was born August 3, 1832 in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Blyden often remarked that "I would rather be a member of this race than a Greek in the time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or Anglo-Saxon in the nineteenth century." Blyden wrote and traveled extensively. During a visit to Egypt in 1866 he recorded that:

"I felt that I had a peculiar heritage in the Great Pyramid built...by the enterprising sons of Ham, from which I descended. The blood seemed to flow faster through my veins. I seemed to hear the echo of those illustrious Africans. I seemed to feel the impulse from those stirring characters who sent civilization to Greece...I felt lifted out of the commonplace grandeur of modern times; and, could my voice have reached every African in the world, I would have earnestly addressed him...: `Retake your fame.'"

Of Blyden, the great Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) stated that:

"You who do not know anything of your ancestry will do well to read the works of Blyden, one of our historians and chroniclers, who has done so much to retrieve the lost prestige of the race."

In 1869, Blyden's essay entitled "The Negro in Ancient History" appeared in the Methodist Quarterly Review. In 1887, Blyden's most comprehensive work- -Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race--was published. A monument stands to Dr. Blyden's memory at Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, West Africa.

In spite of fact that Delany and Blyden struggled during the heart of the nineteenth century, time has not diminished the glory of their deeds. This brief essay, therefore, is intended as a tribute to those deeds with the hope that it will help to inspire the present generation of African people to continue their noble struggle.

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

DR. CHEIKH ANTA DIOP & THE AFRICAN ORIGIN OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

At this point Egypt continues to dominate the focus of our African oriented studies. These studies have clearly demonstrated that not only were early Egypt's origins African, but that through the whole of Egypt's Dynastic Era (the age of the Pharaohs), and during all of her many periods of national splendor, men and women with black skin complexions, broad noses, full lips, and tightly curled hair, were dominant in both the general population and governing elite.photo

In the intense and unrelenting struggle to establish scientifically the African foundations of Egyptian civilization, the late Senegalese scholar Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop remains a most fierce and ardent champion. Dr. Diop (1923-1986) was without a doubt the world's leading Egyptologist and held the position of Director of the Radiocarbon Laboratory at the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa in Dakar, Senegal. In stating the importance of the work, Diop noted emphatically and early on that, "The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt."

The solid range of methodologies employed by Dr. Diop in the course of his extensive Afro-Egyptian labors included: examinations of the epidermis of the mummies of Egyptian kings for verification of their melanin content; precise osteological measurements and meticulous studies in the various relevant areas of anatomy and physical anthropology; careful examinations and comparisons of modern Upper Egyptian and West African blood-types; detailed Afro-Egyptian linguistic studies and the corroboration of distinct Afro-Egyptian cultural traits; documents of racial designations employed by the early Africans themselves; Biblical testimonies and references that address the ancient Egyptian's ethnicity, race and culture; and the writings of early Greek and Roman travelers and scholars describing the physical characteristics of the ancient Egyptians.

There is no doubt that Ancient Egypt was an African civilization.

SOURCES:
African Origin Of Civilization, by Cheikh Anta Diop
Civilization Or Barbarism, by Cheikh Anta Diop

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

BLACK PEOPLE IN THE BRITISH ISLES AND EARLY NORTHERN EUROPE

Any comprehensive account of the African presence in early Europe should include England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Scandinavia. The history and legends of Scotland confirm the existence of "purely Black people." We see one of them in the person of Kenneth the Niger. During the tenth century Kenneth the Niger ruled over three provinces in the Scottish Highlands.

The historical and literary traditions of Wales reflect similar beliefs. According to Gwyn Jones (perhaps the world's leading authority on the subject), to the Welsh chroniclers, "The Danes coming in by way of England and the Norwegians by way of Ireland were pretty well all black: Black Gentiles, Black Norsemen, Black Host."

There is also strong reason to suggest an African presence in ancient Ireland. We have, for example, the legends of the mysterious "African sea-rovers, the Fomorians, who had a stronghold on Torrey Island, off the Northwest Coast." The Fomorians, shrouded deep in mist, came to be regarded as the sinister forces in Irish mythology.

A prominent Viking of the eleventh century was Thorhall, who was aboard the ship that carried the early Vikings to the shores of North America. Thorhall was "the huntsman in summer, and in winter the steward of Eric the Red. He was, it is said, a large man, and strong, black, and like a giant, silent, and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Eric to the worst; he was a bad Christian."

Another Viking, more notable than Thorhall, was Earl Thorfinn, "the most distinguished of all the earls in the Islands." Thorfinn ruled over nine earldoms in Scotland and Ireland, and died at the age of seventy-five. His widow married the king of Scotland. Thorfinn was described as "one of the largest men in point of stature, and ugly, sharp featured, and somewhat tawny, and the most martial looking man... It has been related that he was the foremost of all his men."

SOURCES:
Ancient And Modern Britons, by David Mac Ritchie
Nature Knows No Color-Line, by J.A. Rogers

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY ROME

Ancient African people, sometimes called Moors, are known to have had a significant presence and influence in early Rome. African soldiers, specifically identified as Moors, were actively recruited for Roman military service and were stationed in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Many of these Africans rose to high rank. Lusius Quietus, for example, was one of Rome's greatest generals and was named by Roman Emperor Trajan as his successor. He is described as a "man of Moorish race and considered the ablest soldier in the Roman army."

For most of the second century Africans dominated the intellectual life of Rome. By the end of the second century nearly a third of the Roman senate was of African origin. St. Victor I became the first African bishop of Rome in 189 C.E. and reigned until 199 C.E. Victor I, the first pope known to have had dealings with the imperial household, is described as "the most forceful of the 2nd-century popes."

Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus, the most distinguished of the African emperors of Rome, reigned from 193 to 211, and was born at Leptis Magna on the North African coast. Marcus Opellius Macrinus, Emperor of Rome for fourteen months, "was a Moor by birth." St. Miltiades, a Black priest from Africa, was elected the thirty-seventh pope in 311 C.E. Under Miltiades the Roman persecution of Christians ceased. The third African pope, St. Gelasius I, governed as pope from 492 to 496 C.E.

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, another African, was the first of the Church writers to make Latin the language of Christianity. Other Africans included the playwright Publius Terentius Afer. It is to Terence that we owe the expression, "I am a man, and reckon nothing human is alien to me."

SOURCES:
Rome And Africa, by Susan Raven
African Presence In Early Europe, Edited by Ivan Van Sertima

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

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