Black History Month
RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Purpose: This Educational Program and Research Project is Dedicated to Further Building the Hip Hop--Black Liberation Movement Connection by Integrating Conscious Digital Edutainment with A Scholarly... [more]
RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Purpose:
This Educational Program and Research Project is Dedicated to Further Building the Hip Hop--Black Liberation Movement Connection by Integrating Conscious Digital Edutainment with A Scholarly Self Directed Learning Environment.
"BLACK HISTORY MONTH IS 24/7/365": 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.
Of All the Disciplines of Study History Is Best Qualified To Reward All Research.
There is no true separation between the past, the present and the future. Those who don't change change will be change by change. Help us continue to write our history in real time by making a contribution.
Please be sure to follow the curriculum format in your contributions.
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By Daryl Michael Scott
for ASALH at www.asalh.org
The story of Black History Month begins a decade after the founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. When he conceived of the ASALH in 1915, Carter G. Woodson believed that publishing scientific history about the black race would produce facts that would prove to the world that Africa and its people had played a crucial role in the development of civilization. As a Harvard-trained historian, Woodson, like W. E. B. Du Bois before him, believed that the truth could not be denied and that reason would prevail over prejudice. He thus established a scholarly journal, The Journal of Negro History, a year after he formed the Association. Scientific history, he believed, would counter racial falsehoods, and the community of white scholars would alter its view of the black race. Eventually the truth would trickle down to the public, and the race problem would gradually disappear.
A decade into his labors, Woodson began to think differently about the inherent power of scholarship, the importance of the scholarly community in promoting the truth, and the place of the community in the Association's mission. Scholarship had not transformed race relations, and most white historians had not come to recognize the truth when it was placed before them.
As early as 1920, Woodson had urged black civic organizations to promote the achievements that researchers were uncovering. That year he prodded his fraternity brothers at Omega Psi Phi to take up the work.
In 1924 they responded with the creation of Negro History and Literature Week, which they renamed Negro Achievement Week. By 1925, Woodson decided that the Association had to expand its program. Henforth it would be an organization dedicated to discovering and popularizing the truth. The Association had to re~educate blacks as well as whites, and its doors had to be opened to all interested in history, not just historians and other scholars.
When the Association announced Negro History Week for 1926, Woodson was overwhelmed by the response. Black history clubs sprang up, teachers demanded materials to instruct their pupils, and progressive whites, not simply white scholars and philanthropists, stepped forward to endorse the effort. Woodson and the Association scrambled
to meet the demands of public history. For teachers, the Association published photographs and portraits of important black people. It published plays to dramatize black history. To serve the desire of history buffs to participate in the re~education of black folks, ASNLH formed branches to bring them into the organization.
Woodson selected the week of February that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two giants in the history of African Americans. Lincoln, of course, had issued the Emancipation Proclamation that moved the nation away from slavery, and Frederick Douglass had been the greatest leader of African Americans. Symbolically, the selection of Lincoln's and Douglass' birthdays as the week to study Black history reflected Woodson's belief that the history of African Americans was American history.
When Woodson passed in 1950, the Association continued the celebration of Negro History Week. By the time of his death, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life and substantial progress had been made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the celebration. At mid~century, in cities across the country, mayors issued proclamations noting Negro History Week.
The Black Awakening of the 1960s dramatically expanded the consciousness of African Americans about the importance of black history. The Freedom Schools established during the civil rights era all included the study of Black history. As African Americans entered into mainstream colleges, they demanded Black Studies and Black history became a central feature. Increasingly there were cries for more than a week to study Black history.
The Association, the center of the study of Black life and history, underwent its own changes, including a recognition of the need to devote more time to Black History. In 1976, fifty years after the first celebration, the Association held the first Black History Month. By this time, the entire nation had come to recognize the importance of Black history in the drama of the American
story. Since then all American presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike have issued Black History Month proclamations.
In keeping with tradition, the Association, now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, believes that Black history, like American history, should be studied 365 days a year. Yet as the Founders of Black History Month, ASALH continues to view February as the critical month for carrying forth the mission.
By Daryl Michael Scott
for ASALH at www.asalh.org
Guyanese Dr. Ivan Van Sertima passes at 74
The Guyana Cultural Association New York Inc. /Guyana Folk Festival committee yesterday announced the passing of Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, a former professor of the University of Rutgers and an important son of Guyana’s soil.
Ivan Van Sertima, born January 26, 1935, is a Guyanese-British historian, linguist and anthropologist noted for his Afrocentric theory of pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas.
Van Sertima was born in Kitty when Guyana was still a British colony and remained a British citizen up until his demise. Van Sertima’s, father Frank Obermuller, was a trade union leader. Van Sertima completed his primary and secondary education then commenced poetry writing.
In 1959 he began pursuit of his university education in London where, in addition to producing an array of creative writings; he completed undergraduate studies in African languages and literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1969, and graduated with honours.
During his studies he became fluent in Swahili and Hungarian dialects.
He worked for several years in Great Britain as a journalist, delivering weekly broadcasts to the Caribbean and Africa. In doing field work in Africa, he compiled a dictionary of Swahili legal terms.
In 1970 Van Sertima immigrated to the United States, where he entered Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey for graduate work.
Van Sertima began his more than 30-year teaching career at Rutgers as an instructor in 1972 and completed his master’s degree in 1977. He was Associate Professor of African Studies in the Department of Africana Studies.
Van Sertima has written books in which he argues that the Ancient Egyptians were black and his 1976 book “They Came Before Columbus” was a bestseller and achieved widespread fame for his claims of prehistoric African influences in Central and South America.
It did not receive much professional attention when published, and has been criticized by academic specialists.
On July 7, 1987 Van Sertima appeared before a United States Congressional committee to challenge giving credit for the discovery of America to Christopher Columbus.
Source:
http://www.kaieteurnews.com/2009/05/29/guyanese-dr-ivan-van-sertima-passes-at-74/
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Dr. Ivan Van Sertima passed away peacefully and quickly at home on Memorial Day, May 25th.
Funeral will take place this
The Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive
Harlem NY 10027
They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America
With the skill of a novelist, Ivan Van Sertima reveals to readers compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Black Africans in ancient America. It is the marriage of twin crafts--the artist's and the scholar's--in a book that makes it possible to see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of Black Africans in Pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilization they found here.
Link to the Video Learning Series:
Further Reading: A History Of The African-Olmecs
"We have come to reclaim the house of history. We are dedicated to the revision of the role of the African in the world's great civilizations, the contribution of Africa to the achievement of man in the arts and sci
ences. We shall emphasize what Africa has given to the world, not what it has lost."
With absolute certainty it can stated that, due to his consistent and unrelenting scholarship over the past twenty-five years in the rewriting of African history and the reconstruction of the African's place in world history, particularly in the field of the African presence in ancient America, Ivan Van Sertima has cemented his position as one of our greatest living scholars. Indeed, during this turbulent and exciting period, he has been in the vanguard of those scholars fighting to place African history in a new light. Simply put, Van Sertima's clarion call has been: "We shall follow the trail of the African in Europe, in Asia, and in every corner of the New World, seeking to set the record straight. This is no romantic exploration of antiquities. It is a search for roots."
Ivan Van Sertima was born in Kitty Village, Guyana, South America on January 26, 1935. He was educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University where he graduated with honors. From 1957 to 1959, he served as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. During the decade of the 1960s, he broadcasted weekly from Britain to both Africa and the Caribbean. He came to the United States in 1970, where he completed his post graduate studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Dr. Van Sertima began his teaching career as an instructor at Rutgers in 1972, and he is now Professor of African studies in the Department of Africana Studies.
Van Sertima is a literary critic, a linguist, and an anthropologist, and has made a name for himself in all three fields. As a linguist, he is the compiler of the Swahili Dictionary of Legal Terms, based on his field word in Tanzania, East Africa in 1967. As a literary critic, he is the author of Caribbean Writers, a collection of critical essays on the Caribbean novel. He is also the author of several major literary reviews published in Denmark, India, Britain, and the United States. He was recognized for his work in this field by being requested by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976 to 1980.
The cornerstone of Dr. Van Sertima's legacy will probably be his authorship of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America. According to Van Sertima:
"The African presence in America before Columbus is of importance not only to African and American history, but to the history of world civilizations. The African presence is proven by stone heads, terra cottas, skeletons, artifacts, techniques and inscriptions, by oral traditions and documented history, by botanical, linguistic and cultural data."
They Came Before Columbus is a groundbreaking historical work and a literary hallmark. The ideas and themes presented in They Came Before Columbus were not novel. Indeed, many people had written on the African presence in pre-Columbian America before Van Sertima, notably Leo Wiener, Kofi Wangara, R.A. Jairazbhoy, Legrand H. Clegg II, and Floyd W. Hayes III, but Van Sertima's book was the first such work of its type written by an African to comprehensively address the subject. In his own words, Van Sertima notes that:
"What I have sought to do in this book, therefore, is to present the whole picture emerging from these disciplines, all the facts that are now known about the links between Africa and America in pre-Columbian times."
They Came Before Columbus has now gone through more than twenty printings. It was published in French in 1981, and in the same year was awarded the Clarence L. Holt Prize, a prize awarded every two years "for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora." In 1979 Dr. Chancellor Williams received the Clarence L. Holte prize for the Destruction of Black Civilization.
Following upon the publication of They Came Before Columbus, and equally momentous, in 1979 Dr. Van Sertima founded the Journal of African Civilizations which quickly gained "a reputation for excellence and uniqueness among historical and anthropological journals. It is recognized as a valuable information source for both the layman and student." The late St. Clair Drake described the Journal of African Civilizations as "one of the most important events in the development of research and publication from the perspective of Pan-African scholarship." Van Sertima set the tone early on when he stated that:
"The destruction of African high-cultures after the massive and continuous invasions of Europe left many Africans surviving on the periphery or outer ring of what constituted the best in African civilizations. New facts that challenge this image create such consternation and incredulity that an extraordinarily emotional campaign is mounted by some of the most respected voices in the scientific establishment to explain away the new data.
That drift of dynastic Egypt from Africa has now dramatically slowed. Recent archeological finds have caught up with the mythmakers. More and more the history of Africa is being reconstructed upon the basis of hard, objective data rather than upon the self-serving speculations and racist theories about the black barbarians."
Since 1979 the Journal of African Civilizations has published works by and about many of the world's finest Africanist scholars in a series of magnificent anthologies. These works include Blacks in Science, Nile Valley Civilizations, African Presence in Early America, Black Women in Antiquity, Egypt Revisited, Egypt: Child of Africa, African Presence in Early Europe, Golden Age of the Moor, African Presence in the Art of the Americas, Great Black Leaders, Great African Thinkers (coedited with Larry Obadele Williams), and African Presence in Early Asia (coedited with Runoko Rashidi). In 1998 Transaction Press produced produced Van Sertima's newest text--Early America Revisited--the definitive statement on the subject.
On July 7, 1987 Dr. Van Sertima appeared before a Congressional Committee to challenge the Columbus myth. In November 1991 he defended his thesis in an address to the Smithsonian Institute. In this arena Ivan Van Sertima has emerged as an undefeated champion.
SOURCES: They Came Before Columbus and Early Early America Revisited, by Ivan Van Sertima
Companion Reader: "An excellent/must read review of Afrikan pedagogical and philosophical concepts as per our scholars / master teachers." ASCAC Mid-Atlantic Region PRAXIS Newsletter Ivan Van Sertima Tribute Report Written by William HT Bailey for March/April 2002 issue A distinguished list of legends (Elders and some now Ancestors) gathered - at their own expense - to attempt to articulate the magnitude of Dr. Van Sertima's contribution to our collective psychological healing process.
Interests: pit bull breeding, educational scholarship that is grassroots can le, educational scholarship that is accessible and us
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