[b]THIS WORK IS A SUMMARY OF THE 16 YEARS OF RESEARCH

and field studies which were intended for a 2-volume history of the

African people . The writing plan for the two volumes would have

required at least another five years, even if the serious impairment of

my vision had not occurred . In the meantime there had developed an

urgent need for the results of my research which concentrated on crucial

areas in the history of the Blacks that had been either unknown, known

and misinterpreted, or known but deliberately ignored . My own history

classes were only a part of the rebellion against the only kind of textbooks

available . It was a general rebellion against the subtle message

from even the most "liberal" white authors (and their Negro disciples) :

"You belong to a race of nobodies . You have no worthwhile history to

point to with pride ."

The Destruction of Black Civilization, therefore, could not wait

another five years just to be more detailed, impressive, or massive in

scope, for a reinterpretation of the history of the African race could be

compressed into a small work for background reading, and so written

that black John Doe, cab driver or laborer, and Jane Doe, housemaid or

waitress, as well as college students and professors, could read and

understand the message from their forefathers and foremothers .
[/b]

[b]ORIGIN AND
DEVELOPMENT OF STUDY

In a small town surrounded by cotton fields in South Carolina, a little

black boy in the fifth grade began to harass teachers, preachers, parents

and grandparents with questions which none seemed able to answer :

How is it that white folks have everything and we have nothing?

Slavery-how and why did we become their slaves in the first place?

White children go to fine brick, stone and marble schools nine months a

year while we go to a ramshackle old barn-like building only five-and-ahalf

months, then to the cotton fields . Why?

In the sixth grade one of our teachers, Miss Alice Crossland, helped

me to become a sales agent for the Crisis and the Norfolk Journal and

Guide . This was like turning on the floodlights of heaven ; for the books

on our race, listed on the back pages of the Crisis, started me off on their

never-ending search, raising more questions as I progressed through

school, questions whose answers were even more perplexing . For,

having read everything about the African race that I could get my hands

on, I knew even before leaving high school that (1) The Land of the

Blacks was not only the "cradle of civilization" itself but that the Blacks

were once the leading people on earth ; (2) that Egypt once was not only

all-black, but the very name "Egypt" was derived from the Blacks ; (3)

and that the Blacks were the pioneers in the sciences, medicine, architecture,

writing, and were the first builders in stone, etc .

The big unanswered question, then, was what had happened? How

was this highly advanced Black Civilization so completely destroyed that

its people, in our times and for some centuries past, have found

themselves not only behind the other peoples of the world, but as well,

the color of their skin a sign of inferiority, bad luck, and the badge of the

slave whether bond or free? And, since I had learned that whites were

once enslaved as generally as any other race, how did it come about that

slavery was finally concentrated in Africa on Blacks only? In short, no

books or other studies in high school and college answered or gave clues

to answers to the problems that puzzled me the most . For no matter

what the factual data were, all the books written about Blacks by their

conquerors reflected the conquerors viewpoints . Nothing else should

have been expected . And, considering how thorough-going was the

capture of the minds of the Blacks, it is really not surprising that so many

Negro scholars still faithfully follow in the footsteps of their white

masters .[/b]

[b]
I was convinced that what troubled me and what I wanted to know,

was what troubled the black masses and what they wanted to know . We

wanted to know the whole truth, good and bad . For it would be a continuing

degradation of the African people if we simply destroyed the

present system of racial lies embedded in world literature only to

replace it with glorified fiction based more on wishful thinking than on

the labors of historical research .

My inquiry, therefore, was concerned with Black Civilization alonewhat

the Blacks themselves achieved independently of either Europe or

Asia . This was an entirely new approach to the study of the history of

the Blacks . It meant, first of all, segregating traditional African institutions

from those later influenced by Islamic Asia and Christian Europe . In

this way, and in no other, we can determine what our heritage really was

and, instead of just talking about "identity," we shall know at last

precisely what purely African body of principles, value systems or

philosophy of life gradually evolved from our own forefathers over

countless ages, and we will be able to develop an African ideology to

guide us onward . In other words, there can be no real identity with our

heritage until we know what our heritage really is . It is all hidden in our

history, but we are ignorant of that history . We have been floating

alone, basking blissfully in the sunny heritage of other peoples!

My research was a quest for some specific answers to very, specific

questions . Some of these were : (1) How did all-black Egypt become allwhite

Egypt? (Note at this point that mulattoes were classified as white

in Egypt, all North Africa, and the Middle East-a fact that still confuses

Blacks in the United States where the very opposite policy was adopted .)

(2) What were some of the specific details in the process that so

completely blotted out the achievements of the African race from the

annals of history-just how could this he done on such a universal scale?

(3) How and under what circumstances did Africans, among the very

first people to invent writing, lose this art almost completely? (4) Is there

a single African race, one African people? (5) if we are one race or one

people, how do you explain the numerous languages, cultural varieties

and tribal groupings? (6) Since, as it seemed to me there is far more

disunity, self-hatred and mutual antagonisms among Blacks than any

other people, is there a historical explanation for this? (7) And how, in

puzzling contrast, is the undying love of Blacks for their Europeans and

Asian conquerors and enslavers explained?[/b]

[b]These questions, along with those stated earlier, constituted the core

problems for sixteen years of study . And while the outcome did not

eventuate in the more detailed work as planned, I think I succeeded in

summarizing the most significant highlights of my findings in the

chapters which follow this Preview .

ORIGIN. AND STEPS IN THE STUDY

I . Review of world history . Believing that the history of the race could

not be understood if studied in isolation, I began a slow and deliberately

review of European history, ancient and modern, and the

history of the Arabs and Islamic people . I say "review" because by 1950

I had already studied and taught in the three fields of American,

European and Arabic history-a most fortunate circumstances for the

task ahead .

2. Began the formal study of Africa in Europe . I did not know how

very wise this was when the decision was made . For I did not then know

that Europe and Asia had been hauling out of Africa, over the centuries,

just about all of the historical materials I needed to see and study at the

very outset . Certainly, I knew from reading all about the "violation of

Africa," but to know the scale on which this was done one must see at

least some of it in Europe with his own eyes, and be amazed . The

museums in various cities of the European colonial powers are the

repositories of much of African history .

3. Documentary sources . These are available in both Europe and

America . Reports of Colonial Administrators in Africa, parliamentary

debates, reports and letters from geographers, explorers, captains of

slave ships, and, especially rewarding, the reports and letters from

missionaries to their respective societies' home offices . For the earliest

records on ancient Africa in Europe, Greek and Roman sources were

the most useful (see Bibliographical Notes) .

4. Field Studies . The field studies covered two years of work in

Africa . Armed with a solid background in written documentaries, the

primary concern then turned to oral history and the developing methods

of historical criticism applicable to it . (Several chapters would be

required just to detail the methods and procedures in this relatively new

and rewarding field of oral tradition .) Every region of Black Africa was

covered : 26 nations in East, West, Central and Southern Africa, and 105

language groups .[/b]

[b]the destruction of black civilization . For the migrations help to answer

the question : What happened to the African people? Or, what caused

them to descend from the highest place to the lowest among the people

of the world?

Even though the work was radically abridged, an innovation in

historical research was introduced by going beyond all questions of

doubt, the principal viewpoints of the work . This was the case-study

method by which a representative number of states from every region

of the continent was studied-North, East, West, Central and Southern

Africa .

In the "View from the Bridge" and in the final chapters, I make a

more definite break from the "old line" of historians . To be objective

and more scientific, this school insists, the research scholar should do no

more than present the comprehensive and fully documented results of

his investigations . There should be no "subjective" commentaries, no

editorializing . One should just present the factual data and leave

interpretation and evaluation to the reader .

This may not only be the correct viewpoint, but it is even beautiful for

historians who represent the already arrived people who control the

world . They can well afford the luxury of historical knowledge for

knowledge's sake-the great satisfaction that comes from just knowing

how things came to be .

But the black historican, member of a race under perpetual seige and

fighting an almost invisible war for survival, dare not follow in these

footsteps of the master . Quite the contrary, after faithfully researching

and piecing together the fragmented record of the race's history, the

task of critical analysis and interpretation should begin . What were our

strengths in the past? In what respects were we most vulnerable? Where

did we go wrong? And all this, like the study of history itself, must be

for the express purpose of determining what to do now . In short, the

black historian, if he is to serve his generation, must not hesitate to

declare what he thinks the results of these studies mean . For even when

our history shows us where we have been weak, it is also showing us

how, through our own efforts, we can become strong again .[/b]

To be continued,

In fact, the whole world is black except for anywhere that didn't develop anything.

@ezeagu,

You would have not said that if you had actually read the book. Jokes apart. It explains a lot of the present situation of all blacks in the world today. For those who can lay their hands on a copy and read it will see that what happened to the blacks since the beginning of the first dynasty is still happening in the present.

The blacks made a lot of mistakes then which eventually led to the destruction of the civilization they built. This same mistakes are been made by the blacks of today. The consequences of our past mistakes we are reaping today and the implications of doing thesame mistakes in the present will in the future put the black race in a process of self extermination, naturally with the combination of other avoidable factors.

Excellent thread. Subscribing. . .

^^
Overwhelming findings by Chancellor Williams. Keep subscribing bro.

[b]councillors who had been summoned-some from distant provinces-to

pass on their request to explore . They were the direct representatives of

the people . The voice of the king was in fact the voice of the people,

without which he could not act on any matter of importance, or even

talk alone with strangers . It should be clear, therefore, that our guidelines

for research must lead to a critical analysis of all sources, whether

original, secondary or oral . In particular, we should seek out those works

with the special mission to "prove" the superiority of "whites" by

"proving" the inferiority of Blacks-all in language so subtle, scholarly

and scientific, that to the uncritical mind their "truths" seem selfevident

. But it is also noteworthy that while the most hostile racist

writers usually prove the very opposite of what they intended, their

works inevitably contain useful factual data that must be accepted .

Indeed, it is doubtful whether anyone, even a devil, could write a book
completely devoid of truth .

Research in African history is more tedious, laborious, and time-consuming

than that in other unsuppressed fields . For in developing the

"underdeveloped" history of the Blacks, one has to explore the most

unlikely sources for a fragment here and a fragment there, and in works

in no way concerned with African history, and, just as often, without

any kind of history . Sometimes it is a paragraph or two in an explorer's

account; at other times significant items may be found in the numerous

missionary reports to the home office, explaining the mission's tasks, but

also the native institutions to be overcome . All of these may be valuable

and most valid sources precisely because they were not intended to be

such at all . The writers were detailing bigger European interests . Any

references to Africans were merely incidental to larger purposes . Just

piecing all these fragments together could be a research field by itself .

In my work in European and American history, I ran into no such

problems and the research tasks were easier . In Egyptian history, to give

a final example of Caucasian roadblocks to be overcome, one has the

extra, time-consuming job of identifying the numerous Black giants of

history who have been classified and effectively disguised as Caucasians

over the centuries . First of all . one must know the various names that

referred exclusively to Blacks and by which they were known throughout

the ancient world . For in addition to the more widely used "African"

and "Ethiopian," they were also known as Thebans, Libyans, Thinites,

Nubians, Cushites, Memphites, Numidians, etc . Even before white

Asians gained the ascendency in any of these areas, their very presence[/b]

To be continued,

Why dont you post the link instead

^^
I would have but lets try another approach to this subject. Please those who are interested to read, read and continue reading as I post one after the other so we can all discuss this issues here and together. Your opinion counts. Thanks.

@to-chi, continue the post, i've finished reading everything u posted and it is quite educative

^^
Thank you very much. Chancellor Williams works as detailed in his book is for our own benefit. Keep reading bro.