JOHN HENRIK CLARKE, RUNOKO RASHIDI RACE MEN of the NINETIES

Runoko Rashidi said he was surprised yet "exhilarated" when Dr. John Henrik Clarke joined him on stage during a conference presentation appropriately entitled "Race Women and Race Men: In Recognition of the African Intellectual Genealogy." No better introduction could have been planned for the preeminent scholar, Clarke, who appeared on stage accompanied by his new wife, Sybil Clair Williams, Dr. Leonard Jeffries of City College and Clarke’s assistant, Barbara True.

"Race Women and Race Men" was part of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization’s (ASCAC) 15^th Annual Ancient Kemetic Studies Conference, which was held at City College March 13-15. The conference attracted hundreds of participants from all over the world.

On the first day of the conference, Rashidi was showing a slide presentation highlighting the lives of various men and women who’ve contributed to the field of Black Studies when he was interrupted by Nzinga Ratibisha Heru, International President of ASCAC.

"I would like to introduce to the African family, Mr. and Mrs. John Henrik Clarke" Heru announced. The crowd stood literally exploded with applause. Heru also introduced Clarke’s assistant, "Sister Barbara," and she introduced Jeffries as "A black man from the Nile, walking in the footsteps, standing on the shoulders of Dr. John Henrik Clarke."

A hush filled the crowded auditorium as Clarke began to speak. "I’m very pleased to be here, to be at home on my way back to work," he said to more applause. "I had an unfortunate illness to blame it on…but it’s not going to keep me from going back to work doing what I’m supposed to do…"

"The most important thing I have to do is stay in the struggle," he continued. "I’m glad that all of you are here…I have not lost my enthusiasm or my drive."

Clarke concluded his brief statement saying, "[If] you are in the struggle, I will be with you. Thank you very much."

Clarke remained on the stage while Rashidi, continued his presentation talking about Bishop Henry McNeal Turner referring to him and Edward Wilmont Blyden as "Garveys of the 19^th Century." Turner lived during the post-Reconstruction era and in 1898, he wrote an article entitled "God is a Negro" in a publication called The Voice of Missions. In the article Turner wrote, "in my mind I believe we will ultimately have to go back to Africa."

Later in the chronological presentation, Rashidi showed a picture of Marcus Garvey and said "He is the closest thing I’ve found to God in my lifetime." Garvey(1887-1940) was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, which headed the largest back to Africa Movement in history.

Concluding the presentation, Rashidi showed three slides of children. The last slide was of a young girl from Gambia looking directly into the camera. According to Rashidi, she "seems to be asking the same question the last poets asked in the early 1970’s, ‘Black folks what y’all gonna do?’"

Rashidi, being a link in what he calls "the intergenerational transmission of wisdom," said he dedicated his presentation to Clarke and Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan, two current scholars who were both featured in the slides. He went on to say during the presentation that Clarke is like a father to him. "He is the father of all of us in so many ways."

In Rashidi’s own words, Clarke is like a father and Marcus Garvey is close to God. If looking at his statements using the Christian paradigm of the trinity, that would make Rashidi "the son."

Rashidi is living up to his legacy as "the son." He is a cultural historian who since 1981 has been lecturing on African history throughout the country. He travels extensively to other parts of the world researching the presence of African people. His articles and historical essays have appeared in Afro-Am, Return to the Source, and the Journal of African Civilizations. He is the author of a book entitled Introduction to the Study of African Classical Civilizations, and is a founding member of Amenta, Southern Cradle Research Organization and the Egyptian Civilization Monitoring Committee.

It’s important to note, however, that Rashidi is not an only child. Clarke has many "sons and daughters." Marimba Ani and Booker T. Coleman, who like Rashidi presented at this year’s Ancient Kemetic Studies Conference, give credit to Clarke for playing an important role in their development. Ani wrote in the acknowledgements to her groundbreaking book entitled Yurugu that "I owe my awakening and growth toward a Pan-African Nationalist consciousness to Professor John Henrik Clarke."

Coleman, public school curriculum evaluator and author of several curriculums including "The Kemetic Origin of the Universe" and "The Kemetic Origin of the Earth," says he has been studying under Clarke since he was 12 years old.

Clarke has trained many scholars, and is the author of numerous books including Africans at the Crossroads: Notes for an African World Revolution and most recently My Life in Search of Africa, an autobiographical sketch of his more than sixty-year career in the field of Black Studies.

Another one of Clarke’s contributions is the founding of ASCAC 15 years ago along with Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan, Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, and Dr. Maulana Karenga. The mission of ASCAC is to promote the study of African civilizations by developing study groups and research institutions. The Ancient Kemetic Studies Conference has been an annual event ever since the organization’s inception.

This year’s conference theme was "Sebayet (The Instructions): The African Curriculum." According to Heru, who in the conference journal wrote that the theme "acknowledges and celebrates our scholars and activists who have participated in the thirty year movement of Black Studies." Clarke, Rashidi and the other scholars and participants who attended the conference definitely deserve this recognition.

Posted by RUNOKO RASHIDI

REV. JAMES MARMADUKE BODDY AND THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN ANCIENT JAPAN AND CHINA

"For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of Black blood."
--Japanese Proverb

Presbyterian minister Reverend James Marmaduke Boddy (1886-?), of Troy, New York, was a graduate of Lincoln and Princeton Universities, and the first known African-American writer to address the issue of the African presence in early Japan and China.

Rev. Boddy contributed several articles to the Colored American Magazine, including "The Ethnic Unity of the Negro and the Anglo-Saxon Race" in March 1905, and "Brain Weight and Intellectual Development: Physical Variations of the Negro and the Anglo-Saxon Races" in July 1905. Founded in May 1900, by May 1901 the readership of the Colored American Magazine had grown to one hundred thousand people. Called "the first significant Afro-American journal to emerge in the twentieth century," in October 1905 the Colored American Magazine published Boddy's essay entitled "The Ethnology of the Japanese Race."

In "The Ethnology of the Japanese Race" Boddy attempted to document what he considered a prominent and indelible African strain running through early Japanese history, and that the Japanese people are, at least in part, "Asian Negroes." Reference the work of pioneer ethnologist and anthropologist James Cowles Prichard, M.D. (1786-1848), Rev. Boddy wrote that:

"They are also described as having `peculiar features, `Crisp hair' and `dark complexion.' Besides their Negro features, which are very observable, the early Japanese historians themselves have described for us the `Black Barbarians of the South,' who, in an age which antedates authentic history, came from the south in ships and settled in Japan."

Rev. Boddy concluded by saying that:

"These immigrants mingled and amalgamated one with another and with the natives, and in time became a homogeneous race, whose predominating physical characteristics bespeak the unmistakable presence of a large Negro element."

As for the African presence in early China, there is evidence of substantial populations of an African substratum in the earliest periods of Chinese history, and reports of major kingdoms ruled by Africans are frequent in Chinese documents. The Shang dynasts of ancient China are described as "having black and oily skin." The Chinese sage Lao-tze (ca. 600 B.C.E.) was "black in complexion." He was described as "marvelous and beautiful as jasper." Magnificent temples were erected for him, inside of which he was worshipped like a god."

SOURCES
African Presence In Early Asia, Edited by Runoko Rashidi & Ivan Van Sertima
The Ethnology Of The Japanese Race, by James Marmaduke Boddy

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

GEORGE WELLS PARKER RACE MAN AND PIONEER TO THE PAST

"Teach a child or nation that it springs from an inferior race and that is can never hope to overcome that inferiority, and you have made an obedient servant and a community of slaves." --George Wells Parker

In the words of George Wells Parker (1882-1931): "No race can lay claim to such glory as can the African race, and when the truth is known, as it must be known some day, all other races will bow to it, not because they wish, but because truth is a tyrant that admits of no falsity."

An historian and activist, George Wells Parker was born September 18, 1882, the son of Abraham W. Parker of Petersburg, Virginia and Augusta Bing of Charleston, South Carolina." After moving to Nebraska he attended Creighton University in Omaha, until his junior year, 1909-10. Later in life Parker became an enthusiastic supporter of Marcus Garvey, and performed a dynamic function in aiding Black people relocating to Omaha in 1916 and 1917.

In 1917 Parked helped found the Hamitic League of the World. The term "Hamitic" was a popular and progressive expression used at the time to denote African people. It was a term particularly applied to the great ancient African builders of grand civilizations. The declared aims of the Hamitic League of the World were:

"To inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind and to place in the hands of every race man and woman and child the facts which support the League's claim that the Negro Race is the greatest race the world has ever known."

In 1918 the Hamitic League of the World published a twenty-nine page pamphlet by Parker entitled The Children of the Sun which contained an enlightening section highlighting the African presence in classical African, Asian and European civilizations.

SOURCES:
Children Of The Sun, by George Wells Parker
African Origin Of The Grecian Civilization, by George Wells Parker

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/hopkins.jpg

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930), called the "Dean of African-American women writers," was born in Portland, Maine. She moved to Boston as an infant and was educated in the Boston public schools. In time, Hopkins became a journalist, essayist, novelist, poet, publisher, public lecturer, actress, musician, and stenographer for the Bureau of Statistics on the Massachusetts Census of 1895 for four years.

From the age of fifteen, after winning a literary contest sponsored by the African-American playwright, novelist, essayist, historian, and abolitionist, William Wells Brown (1814-1884), Hopkins wrote prolifically. At the age of twenty she completed her first play--Slaves' Escape; or The Underground Railroad, and soon became a founder and literary editor of the Colored American Magazine, "the first significant Afro-American journal to emerge in the twentieth century." During this period, she began to lecture on Black history in churches and schools.

As an historian, the pinnacle of her writing career came in 1905. From February to July 1905 Hopkins wrote one of the earliest discourses on the Global African Community in the form of a four-part series on "The Dark Races of the Twentieth Century," published in The Voice of the Negro. In the same year Hopkins authored and published a thirty-one page booklet entitled "A Primer of Facts Pertaining to the Early Greatness of the African Race and the Possibility of Restoration by its Descendants--With Epilogue."

Beginning in 1904, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins began to suffer from poor health. She died in obscurity on August 13, 1930 after a full lifetime of "placing the interests of her people above all else." This brief essay is designed to help rescue Ms. Hopkins from that obscurity.

SOURCES:
Primer Of Facts, by Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins
African Presence In Early Asia, Edited by Runoko Rashidi & Ivan Van Sertima

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN EARLY ARABIA

The Arabian Peninsula was early populated by Black people. Once dominant over the entire peninsula, the African presence in early Arabia is most clearly traceable through the Sabeans. The southwestern corner of the peninsula was their ancient home. This area is today called Yemen. In antiquity this region gave rise to a high degree of civilization because of the growth of frankincense and myrrh.

The city of Makkab was considered a holy place and the destination of pilgrims long before the prophet Muhammad. Muhammad himself, who was to unite the whole of Arabia, appears to have had a prominent African lineage. According to al-Jahiz, the guardian of the sacred Kaaba, Abd-al-Muttalib, "fathered ten Lords, Black as the night and magnificent." One of these men was Abdallah, the father of Muhammad.

According to tradition, the first Muslim killed in battle was Mihja--a Black man. Another Black man, Bilal, was such a pivotal figure in the development of Islam that he has been referred to as "a third of the faith."

Many of the earliest Muslim converts were Africans, and a number of the Muslim faithful sought refuge in Ethiopia because of initial Arabian hostility to Muhammad's teachings. It was this relationship which caused Muhammad to declare that, "Who brings an Ethiopian man or an Ethiopian woman into his house, brings the blessings of God there."

SOURCES:
African Presence In Early Asia, Edited By Runoko Rashidi & Ivan Van Sertima
Wonderful Ethiopians Of The Ancient Cushite Empire by Drusilla D. Houston, Al I. Obaba (Editor)

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN THE ANCIENT FAR EAST

Although the island nation of Japan is assumed by many to have been historically composed of an essentially homogenous population, the accumulated evidence places the matter in a vastly different light. A Japanese proverb states that: "For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of Black blood." Another recording of the proverb is: "Half the blood in one's veins must be Black to make a good Samurai." Sakanouye Tamura Maro, a Black man, became the first Shogun of Japan.

In China, an Africoid presence is visible from remote antiquity. The Shang, for example, China's first dynasts, are described as having "black and oily skin." The famous Chinese sage Lao-Tze was "black in complexion."

Funan is the name given by Chinese historians to the earliest kingdom of Southeast Asia. Their records expressly state that, "For the complexion of men, they consider black the most beautiful. In all the kingdoms of the southern region, it is the same."

The first kingdom in Vietnam was the Kingdom of Lin-yi. Its inhabitants possessed "black skin, eyes deep in the orbit, nose turned up, hair frizzy at a period when they were not yet subject to foreign domination and preserved the purity of this type."

The fate of the Black kingdoms and the Black people of Far East Asia must be tied to increased pressure from non-Africoid peoples pushing down from northern Asia. Indeed, the subject of what might be called "Black and Yellow racial and cultural relations in both ancient and modern times" is so critical that it must be developed as a special area of study. It is of particular importance to African and African-oriented scholars and historians.

SOURCES:
African Presence In Early Asia, Edited by Runoko Rashidi & Ivan Van Sertima
Black Jade, by James E. Brunson

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

THE MOORISH CONQUEST OF SPAIN

Early in the eighth century Moorish soldiers crossed over from Africa to the Iberian peninsula. The man chosen to lead them was General Tarik ibn Ziyad. In 711, the bold Tarik, in command of an army of 10,000 men, crossed the straits and disembarked near a rock promontory which from that day since has borne his name--Djabal Tarik (`Tarik's Mountain'), or Gibraltar. In August 711, Tarik won paramount victory over the opposing European army. On the eve of the battle, Tarik is alleged to have roused his troops with the following words:

"My brethren, the enemy is before you, the sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general; I am resolved either to lose my life or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans."

Wasting no time to relish his victory, Tarik pushed on with his dashing and seemingly tireless Moorish cavalry to the Spanish city of Toledo. Within a month's time, General Tarik ibn Ziyad had effectively terminated European dominance of the Iberian peninsula. Musa ibn Nusayr, Arab governor of North Africa, joined Tarik in Spain and helped complete the conquest of Iberia with an army of 18,000 men. The two commanders met in Talavera, where the Moors were given the task of subduing the northwest of Spain. With vigor and speed they set about their mission, and within three months they had swept the entire territory north of the Ebro River as far as the Pyrenees Mountains and annexed the turbulent Basque country.

In the aftermath of these brilliant struggles, thousands of Moors flooded into the Iberian peninsula. So eager were they to come that some are said to have floated over on tree-trunks. Tarik himself, at the conclusion of his illustrious military career, retired to the distant East, we are informed, to spread the teachings of Islam.

SOURCES
Golden Age Of The Moor, Edited by Ivan Van Sertima
The Story Of The Moors In Spain, by Stanley Lane-Poole

By RUNOKO RASHIDI