Despite me posting during Black History month, I feel that one month is not enough for us. We should never settle for just one month. We should instead demand that all schools make Black History mandatory in all grades of school. In fact, it should be global history format that includes objective history of all known cultures and races.
This will instill a sense of cultural and racial pride in our so called African-American children while at the same time lowering racism, prejudice, and intolerance from all other groups towards not only African-Americans, but other non Anglo Saxon groups.
What we need is to reconnect with our African heritage as well as our native American roots! Too many of us have a deeply rooted hatred toward our motherland. This is because we have been fed negative images of Africa for quite a few generations. Because we are not told the truth about our roots and our motherland Africa we do not want to be associated with Africa.
Because of racism much of the truth about Africa and her rich history has been hidden, lied about, and made to appear dark and without civility and culture. So much effort has been taken to make us believe that the true inhabitants of Egypt, which is a part of the continent of Africa, were not African nor Black.
They do not want to attribute anything of value towards human history to Africans. So true is this that they try to make us believe that extraterrestrial beings (i.e. aliens) designed and built the great Pyramids of Egypt. Yet they try not to allow us knowledge of the fact that south of Egypt, deeper into Africa are many more pyramids which rival and some cases surpass the great pyramids of Giza. This is proof that Africans built them. What became of many of Africa's great nations is another topic. My point is that there is much to be proud of our motherland.
Sit back and let me tell you some of what I was told as a child about our rich and beautiful motherland. We can be proud, stand tall and look at all other human being as our equals while saying I am of African decent with no shame!
The continent now known as Africa was once known as Alkebulan. Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent. Africa, particularly central Eastern Africa, is widely regarded within the scientific community to be the origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes), as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids and their ancestors, as well as later ones that have been dated to around seven million years ago – including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo Sapien (modern human) found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago.
It is generally conceded in most scholarly circles, that mankind originated in Africa. This makes the African man the father, and the African woman the mother of mankind. By necessity, the earliest people were ethnically homogeneous and Negroid. Gloger's Law, which would also appear to be applicable to human beings, lays it down that warm-blooded animals evolving in a warm humid climate will secrete a black pigment (eumelanin). Hence, if mankind originated in the tropics around the latitude of the great lakes, he was bound to have brown pigmentation from the start and it was by differentiation in other climates that the original stock later split into different races.
According to Cheikh Anta Diop, "the color black acts as a protection of the organism. If man was first born in Africa and had not been black, he would not have survived. We know scientifically, that ultra-violet rays would have destroyed the human organism in the equatorial regions, if the organism had not been protected by black pigmentation, that is Melanin. That is obviously why man, first born in Africa was black. It is not something we need to be proud of, it is simply a fact."
The oldest known fossil remains, according to Dr. Louis Leakey, were found in the Olduvai Gorge region in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. These first "small" people were known as the "Twa", who worshipped the God Bes, a primitive human form of Horus I, being the earliest form of Ptah—the God of Gods.
We also find this same black God, Ptah, symbolized in the mystery system in Egypt. The Twa are said to have migrated the four thousand one hundred miles of the Nile river, establishing what was later to become the Egyptian civilization.
According to Manetho, the first dynasty was established by Menes (or Narmer), about 5500 B.C., when Menes conquered Lower Egypt, combining both Upper and Lower Egypt. This alliance of the red and white crowns of the two countries were joined, and Menes inherited the double diadem, becoming the first Pharaoh of the world.
Slavery had long been practiced in Africa. Between the 7th and 20th centuries, Arab slave trade (also known as slavery in the East) took 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries (500 years), the Atlantic slave trade took an estimated 7–12 million slaves to the New World.
In West Africa, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic economic shifts in local polities. The gradual decline of slave-trading, prompted by a lack of demand for slaves in the New World, increasing anti-slavery legislation in Europe and America, and the British Royal Navy's increasing presence off the West African coast, obliged African states to adopt new economies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.
Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. The largest powers of West Africa (the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire) adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on the development of "legitimate commerce" in the form of palm oil, cocoa, timber and gold, forming the bedrock of West Africa's modern export trade. The Oyo Empire, unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars. Now let us examine a few great leaders from Africa. The Nubian king Piankhi (reigned ca. 741-ca. 712 BC) began the conquest of Lower Egypt which resulted in the establishment of the Twenty-fifth, or "Ethiopian," Dynasty of pharaohs. This was one of the few times in African history when a state from the interior of the continent played a role in the politics of the Mediterranean.
Piankhi was the hereditary ruler of the kingdom of Cush on the Upper Nile in what is now the northern Sudan. About 741 B.C. he succeeded his father, Kashta, who seems to have founded this Nubian Kingdom. By this time Lower Egypt had been in full decline for almost half a millennium. The Egyptian state was torn by internal power struggles among petty rulers, so the situation was ripe for a strong invader to take over. Piankhi moved steadily down the Nile, conquering towns one by one. By 721 B.C. he was in possession of Heracleopolis, and finally he captured Heliopolis in the Delta.
At this point Piankhi regarded the conquest of Egypt as complete, and he returned home to his Cushite capital in Napata after placing the Egyptian rulers in tributary status. He was received in Napata with much acclaim for having humiliated the former Egyptian overlords of Nubia, but the tributary states which he left soon fell under the sway of a local ruler named Tefnakht, who reasserted Egyptian independence.
A great deal is known about the details of Piankhi's campaign because he built a huge stele in Amon with a lengthy inscription. This account is regarded as unusually rational and lively by modern Egyptologists.
Just like the Nubian rulers who followed him, Piankhi was culturally very conservative, and he sought to strengthen some of the institutions which were undergoing decline in Egypt. In the brief time he was in Lower Egypt, he oversaw the restoration of some crumbling temples. Upon his return to Cush he introduced the Egyptian custom of building pyramids for royal mausoleums, and he had a great pyramid built for himself in Kuru, south of Napata on the Nile. He rebuilt the temple at Jebel Barkal and also built a number of other temples in the Egyptian style.
Curiously, all the Egyptian sources dwell on Piankhi's love of fast horses. He instituted the practice of decorating teams of horses to pull royal chariots, and the remains of a team of horses were found in his tomb at Kuru.
We should all know that Imhotep of Africa was the first medical doctor known by name. An Egyptian who lived around 2650 B.C., he was an adviser to King Zoser at a time when Egyptians were making progress in medicine. Among his contributions to medicine was a textbook on the treatment of wounds, broken bones, and even tumors. Imhotep was also an astrologer (a person who believes that the stars and planets influence human affairs) and the architect (some who designs buildings) of the earliest Egyptian pyramid. In later centuries, the Egyptians worshipped Imhotep as a god.
How could I go any further without mentioning our great African women, Queens and female warriors.
According to Greek accounts, the earliest Amazons came from Libya (then a name for most of North Africa). They wore red leather and carried crescent-shaped shields. It was these Libyan Amazons, they said, who later founded cities and temples in the Aegean and Anatolia.
At a much later period, the Amazons of Dahomey were crack all-female troops, all female, who also served as royal bodyguards. They were also priestesses and wore crescent moon crowns.
The Hausa had a number of warrior queens, notably Amina of Zau Zau. A woman named Bazao-Turunku led warriors and founded a town south of Zaria.
Nupe women warriors called Isadshi-Koseshi fought as fiercely as the men, opposing invasions of the Fulbe conquerers who raided the Nupe for cattles and slaves, especially women.
In Jamaica Nyabinghi, the "hidden queen" fought to free Africans from English slavery and rule. Also called Queen Muhmusa or Tahtahme, she inspired the Nyabinghi underpinnings of Rastafarianism.
Nanny of the Maroons was born in Ghana, and folk history says that she came to Jamaica with the express purpose of becoming a high priestess and leader of her people, never having been a slave. She was an obeah-woman who led the eastern Maroons based in Moreton, and forged an alliance with another group led by Cudjoe. (The name Maroons comes from the Spanish cimarron,meaning "gone back to the wild.")
The Jamaican Maroons were the first people to force the English to sign a treaty with their subjects, on March 1, 1738. The lands conceded in this treaty formed a base for the Maroon's independent survival. One of these communities was named Nannytown after the female Ghanaian leader. Maroon country was so feared by the English that it became known as the "Land of Look-Behind."
WOMEN BEAT BACK SLAVECATCHERS
In the summer of 1848, eight or ten people made it across the Ohio river in their northward flight from slavery. The slave catchers tracked them into town, but the bounty they were after turned out to be elusive:
"The women began to gather from adjoining houses until the Amazons were about equal to the [slave-hunters]-- the former with shovels, tongs, washboards and rolling pins; the latter with revolvers, sword-canes and bowie-knives. Finally the beseigers decamped, leaving the Amazons in possession of the field, amid the jeers and loud huzzahs of the crowd."
--Report from The North Star, an African-American paper out of Cincinnati, August 11, 1848. (For more, see Dorothy Sterling's book Speak Out In Thunder Tones.)
GHANA
"If you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon you my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight until the last of us falls in the battlefield."
---Ya Asantewa, an Ashanti queen who led the resistence to British colonial rule in Ghana. She succeeded in the short run, but the Ashanti were heavily outgunned.
THE "WAR OF THE WOMEN"
The Aba rebellion in southeastern Nigeria grew out of a traditional female rite of the Igbo. People were outraged at the colonial government's plan to tax women, "the trees that bear fruit." In protest, Ibo women bound their heads with ferns, painted their faces with ash, put on loincloths and carried sacred sticks with palm frond wreaths. Thousands marched on the District Office, dancing, singing protests, and demanding the cap of office of the colonial chief Okugo. When he approached one woman to count her goats and sheep, she had retorted, "Was mother counted?"
This protest spread into a vast regional insurrection. The Ibo women's councils mobilized demonstrations in three provinces, turning out over 2,000,000 protesters. The British District Officer at Bende wrote, "The trouble spread in the 2nd week of December to Aba, an important trading center on the railway. Here there converged some 10,000 women, scantily clothed, girdled with green leaves, carrying sticks. Singing angry songs against the chiefs and the court messengers, the women proceeded to attack and loot the European trading shops, stores, and Barclay's Bank, and to break into the prison and release the prisoners."
Elsewhere women protestors burned down the hated British "Native Courts" and cut telegraph wires, throwing officials into panic. The colonials fired on the female protesters, killing more than fifty and wounding more. Marches continued sporadically into 1930. These mass actions became known as the Aba Rebellion of 1929, or The War of the Women. It was one of the most significant anti-colonial revolts in Africa of that day.
Diola women led similar protests against French attempts to exact a tribute from their rice harvest in Senegal, an event dramatized by filmmaker Ousmane Sembene.
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Never could we forget the Queen of Sheba, otherwise known as the Queen of the South (regina austris), or variously as the Sabaean, Maqeda (Makeda), Belkis (Bilqis), or Nikaule (Nicaula). The Queen of Sheba first appears in the Old Testament. Competing interpretations of the figure since biblical times have cast her alternatively as a figure of wisdom and faith, or as suspect and even demonized (Ginzberg 1982, VI.292.55). Jacob Lassner has devoted an extensive 1993 study to postbiblical Jewish, and then medieval Muslim, texts and traditions in which she is shown as troubling the natural, binary, gender order of male dominance over women, and being brought to heel by Solomon (Lassner, passim, and esp. 80-83). As a wealthy, powerful woman, she attracted negative gendered readings, and she was denounced by some authors for seizing power from a husband she had murdered, while for others she wrested power from an unjust tyrant. Sheba narratives are deeply gendered in a manner disdainful of or hostile to women, stipulating that the queen's desirability must be neutralized by submission to Solomon's powers, which reaffirm the gender order willed by God, against the usurped power of a woman and her wily tricks to blur gender distinctions. Iconography, by stressing the gesture of kneeling before the king, has also made her an image of subjection and subservience.If you want to know who I am
I am daughter of Angola, of Kêto and Nagô
I don't fear blows because I am a warrior
Inside of samba I was born
I raised myself, I transformed myself, and
no one will lower my banner, O, O, O.
I am a warrior woman daughter of Ogun and Yansâ
---Song from an album by Brazilian singer Clara NuñesDzugudini, a grand-daughter of "the famous ruler Monomatapa," was the founding Rain Queen of the Lovedu. Her royal father was angry that she bore a child out of wedlock. Oral tradition says her mother taught her the art of rain-making and gave her rain charms and sacred beads. Then she fled south with some supporters. They settled peacefully among the Sotho. In the early 1800s, a leadership crisis was resolved by accession of the first Mujaji, a Rain Queen with both political and ceremonial power. Chiefs presented her with wives. She had no military, but even the Zulu king Shaka paid her tribute because of her rain power. Her successors have less authority, but still preside over womanhood initiations and other important rituals.
Rain Queens of the Lovedu
SWAZI
The queen is called by honorific titles such as "Mother of the Country" and Indlovukati, "Lady Elephant." She is a powerful rain maker, guardian of the royal clan's sacred objects, and addresses the ancestors on behalf of the Swazi nation. She has the power to give sanctuary to persons condemned by the king's court. Her village is the capital of the country, where troops are quartered.
HAUSA
Many powerful queens are remembered in Hausa tradition. Among the Kotoko, the Gumsu was the female heir of the land, associated with the morning star, mother of all stars. She lived in the southern part of the palace and performed functions associated with the south, was the head of the country's women and played a leading part in the seven year rites for its welfare. The Kotoko government was based on a delicate balance of male/female, right/left, north/south. Among the Kanuri, the Gumsu retained her authority in Muslim times. Diwan records recount that the Gumsu Fasama became angry at her son, Sultan Biri ibn Dunama, for executing a thief, rather than cutting off his hands as the Koran decreed. "Accordingly his mother put Biri in prison, and he submitted to the punishment for a whole year.
In 960 B.C., the nation that is now called Ethiopia, came back upon the center of the stage of history. Ethiopia was then represented by a queen, who in some books is referred to as "Makeda" or "Belkis." She is better known to the world as the Queen of Sheba. In his book, "World's Great Men of Color," J.A. Rogers, gives this description: "Out of the mists of three thousand years, emerges this beautiful story of a Black Queen, who attracted by the fame of a Judean monarch, made a long journey to see him."
The Queen of Sheba is said to have undertaken a long and difficult journey to Jerusalem, in order to learn of the wisdom of the great King Solomon. Makeda and King Solomon were equally impressed with each other. Out of their relationship was born a son, Menelik I.
This Queen is said to have reigned over Sheba and Arabia as well as Ethiopia. The queen of Sheba's capital was Debra Makeda, which the Queen built for herself.
In Ethiopia's church of Axum, there is a copy of what is said to be one of the Tables of Law that Solomon gave to Menelik I.
The story of the Queen of Sheba is deeply cherished in Ethiopia, as part of the national heritage. This African Queen is mentioned in two holy books, the Bible and the Qur'an.
Ann Nzingha "Queen of Ndongo" (1582-1663)~In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese stake in the slave trade was threatened by England and France. This caused the Portuguese to transfer their slave-trading activities southward to the Congo and South West Africa. Their most stubborn opposition, as they entered the final phase of the conquest of Angola, came from a queen who was a great head of state, and a military leader with few peers in her time.
The important facts about her life are outlined by Professor Glasgow of Bowie, Maryland:
"Her extraordinary story begins about 1582, the year of her birth. She is referred to as Nzingha, or Jinga, but is better known as Ann Nzingha. She was the sister of the then-reigning King of Ndongo, Ngoli Bbondi, whose country was later called Angola. Nzingha was from an ethnic group called the Jagas. The Jagas were an extremely militant group who formed a human shield against the Portuguese slave traders. Nzingha never accepted the Portuguese conquest of Angola, and was always on the military offensive. As part of her strategy against the invaders, she formed an alliance with the Dutch, who she intended to use to defeat the Portuguese slave traders."
In 1623, at the age of forty-one, Nzingha became Queen of Ndongo. She forbade her subjects to call her Queen, She preferred to be called King, and when leading an army in battle, dressed in men's clothing.
In 1659, at the age of seventy-five, she signed a treaty with the Portuguese, bringing her no feeling of triumph. Nzingha had resisted the Portuguese most of her adult life. African bravery, however, was no match for gun powder. This great African woman died in 1663, which was followed by the massive expansion of the Portuguese slave trade.
The Dohemian Female Army (1841)~Dohomey was a wealthy West African empire. The elements of Dohomey's success were its trade and its powerful army, whose soldiers were considered invincible.
The fierce and mighty Behanzin Bowelle was the king of this great empire. His army contained 25,000 warriors, 5,000 of which were women. The women were the most respected and feared part of Behanzin's army. They ranked above the men.
These women were thoroughly trained and kept trim by a system of gymnastics developed by the Dohomians themselves. Recruited from among the healthiest and strongest virgins in Dohomey, these females were sworn to chastity.
The king sometimes picked his wives from among them or gave them to his bravest warriors.
The training of these women was very rigorous. One of their drills was charging three times barefoot into a construction of thorns, nude to their waist. Another exercise was to kill a maddened bull with their bare hands.
Perfect was the discipline of these female warriors. They fought with extreme bravery. Excited by their own courage and undying energy, the women, like the men were thought to be invincible.
More nonsense has been written about Cleopatra than any other African queen. Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinct African woman, dark in color.
Born in 69 B.C., Cleopatra came to the throne that she shared with her brother, Ptolemy XIII, when she was 18 years old.
Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, has come down to us through twenty centuries, as the perfect example of the seductive art in woman. With her beauty, learning, culture and charm, Cleopatra held two successive masters of the world; Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Cleopatra aligned herself with Julius Caesar, who reinforced her power. Their political and sexual relationship was a maneuver to save Egypt from the worst aspects of Roman domination. After Julius Caesar was murdered, Cleopatra, still in her early twenties, met Mark Antony, and a love affair, strongly motivated by politics began. Her effect on Mark Antony was profound. This noble Roman turned traitor to his own people when he attempted to save the country of this fascinating Black Queen.
After Antony's death, the victor, Octavius, assumed full control of Egypt. Cleopatra, now without a protector or champion, committed suicide. After Cleopatra's death, Egypt became a Roman colony and the harsher aspects of Roman rule settled over Egypt and the Middle East.
Did you ever wonder why the Italians, especially Sicilians are olive skinned and dark haired? Why are they not considered white? Hannibal of Carthage (247-183 B.C.) is the answer. Hannibal is said to be the greatest military leader and strategist of all time. Hannibal was born in 247 B.C., when Carthage, then the maritime power, was beginning to decline. The Carthaginians were descendants of the Phoenicians, who were great Black merchants. They traded with India and the people of the Mediterranean, and the Sicily Isles.
When very young, Hannibal accompanied Hamilclar, his father in a battle with the Romans. Seventeen years later, he succeeded his father and became supreme commander of the peninsula. Hannibal had 80,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and 40 African war elephants. He conquered major portions of Spain and France, and all of Italy, except for Rome.
Hannibal marched his army and war elephants through the Alps to surprise and conquer his enemies. In one battle, the Romans put 80,000 men on the field to defeat Hannibal, led by Scipio. When Scipio attacked with his entire army, Hannibal had so studied the grounds and arranged his men so that they surrounded the Romans. He then turned his armored war elephants loose and trampled them. Behind them, he sent his African swordsmen to complete the slaughter.
In another battle, Rome sent 90,000 men led by Varro and Emilius. With only 50,000 men, knowing he could not win by using his main force, Hannibal placed the weakest part of his army in the center, contrary to the best military rules. With his veterans and cavalry on both wings, the Romans struck them in full center as Hannibal had anticipated. When they were sure of victory by overcoming the center, Hannibal's flank closed in and killed 70,000 men, 80 senators and Emilius.
Hannibal, it's said, later went on to become a statesman of Carthage, and later took his own life, rather than surrender to Rome.
Aesop (560 B.C.)~ The influence of Aesop on the Western thoughts and morals is profound. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, and other great thinkers found inspiration in his words of wisdom. His writings have been translated into almost every language of the civilized world.
Aesop's was a Phygrian, in Asia Minor, a Black slave, flat-nosed, thick lips, black skin from which his name was contracted (Esop being the same as Ethiop).
Aesop's first master was Xanthus, who saw him in a market where he was for sale with two other slaves, a musician and an orator. Xanthus asked the musician what could he do? He replied "Anything." The orator to the same question replied, "Everything." Turning next to Aesop, "And what can you do?" "Nothing," Aesop replied. "Nothing," repeated Xanthus, and Aesop replied, "One of my companions says he can do anything, and the other says that he can do everything. That leaves me nothing." This is an example of the wit of Aesop.
Queen Tiye (1415-1340 B.C.)~This celebrated Nubian queen was the beloved and honored wife of Amen-Hetep III, who was one of the world's mightiest Pharaohs and conquerors.
King Amen-Hetep III, had a very deep and unusual affection for Queen Tiye. In addition to the usual titles of a King's wife, Tiye is described as "Royal" daughter and "Royal" sister, when she was neither the daughter or the sister of a king, but of parents who were not of royal lineage.
The full queenly titles which Tiye held in common with the great heiress princesses of Egypt, were bestowed on her by Amen-Hetep III, and were honorary.
Although Tiye was a girl of common birth, she was a person of very strong character. Evident from records, she was a beautiful young Black queen. A woman of great intellect, ability, and a powerful influence. She shared the crown with her husband as though she had been its lineal heiress. Queen Tiye had such an important part in the affairs of Egypt, that foreign diplomats often appealed directly to her in matters affecting certain international relations.
Queen Tiye was a full-blooded African. Her son, Akhenaton and his wife, Nefertiti are the parents of King Tutankhamen, who is also known as "King Tut."
As a symbol of the love Amen-Hetep III, had for Queen Tiye, he declared that so she was treated in life as his equal, she would be depicted in death. At the time of her death, she was given a full "Royal" burial.
http://www.africawithin.com/hpi/hp21.htm
http://www.africawithin.com/hpi/hp16.htm
http://www.africawithin.com/hpi/hp7.htm
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/africanqueens.html
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/piankhi-king/
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